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Thu, 26 Aug 1999 10:36:24 -0500 |
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Steven Schwartz wrote:
>Renato Vinicius:
>
>>Does anybody know if there is Incidental Music - or any other -
>>for or inspired on The Canterbury Tales, of Chaucer.
>
>I believe George Dyson, British composer and father of Nobel laureate in
>physics Freeman Dyson, wrote something.
Freeman Dyson has made significant contributions to physics, but has
not received a Nobel prize (his major work in QED involved proving the
equivalence of the Schwinger and Feynman methods -- for which Schwinger,
Feynman, and Tomonga got the prize in 1963).
However, in Freeman Dyson's book "Disturbing the Universe," he includes a
number of ancedotes about his parents. Of particular interest concerning
the Canterbury Tales, Freeman Dyson writes that his parents developed a
"secret" shorthand method of communicating by humming sections from "The
Canterbury Pilgrims" during conversations. By softly humming the song of
a particular character, they could discreetly comment about participants
in a conversation without others in the group catching on. Unfortunately,
the secrecy of these communications was necessarily based upon the general
ignorance of the music -- not a flattering commentary on public knowledge
of Dyson's compositions...
Donald L. Gunter, Ph.D.
Dept. of Medical Physics and Diagnostic Radiology
Rush-Pres. St. Luke's Medical Center
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