Caroline Bosanquet

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Rosamund Caroline Bosanquet (1940-2013) was a British cellist, music teacher, and composer, known especially for her book The Secret Life of Cello Strings: Harmonics for Cellists. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

The daughter of Lancelot Stephen Bosanquet, a mathematics professor at University College London, and his wife Isabel Mary Linfoot, [2] Caroline Bosanquet was born on 3 March 1940. She gained a Bachelor of Music degree from Durham University and studied cello and piano at the Royal Academy of Music, [1] and later with Christopher Bunting. [3]

Lancelot Stephen Bosanquet was a British mathematician who worked in analysis, especially Fourier series.

University College London, which has operated under the official name of UCL since 2005, is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. It is a member institution of the federal University of London, and is the third largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment, and the largest by postgraduate enrolment.

Bachelor of Music is an academic degree awarded by a college, university, or conservatory upon completion of a program of study in music. In the United States, it is a professional degree, and the majority of work consists of prescribed music courses and study in applied music, usually requiring proficiency in an instrument, voice, or conducting. In Canada, the B.M. is often considered an undergraduate degree. Programs typically last from three to four and a half years.

Career

Bosanquet was active as a teacher throughout her career. [3] She was particularly interested in incorporating Alexander Technique into her teaching, and published articles on its use in music education. [4] In her late forties, she became interested in composition, and her music has been widely performed. Her most famous composition is her Elegy in memoriam Joan Dickson, which has been widely played due to its inclusion on the ABRSM cello Grade 8 syllabus. [1] She was a member of staff at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology.

The Alexander Technique, named after its creator Frederick Matthias Alexander, is an educational process that was created to retrain habitual patterns of movement and posture. Alexander believed that poor habits in posture and movement damaged spatial self-awareness as well as health, and that movement efficiency could support overall physical well-being. He saw the technique as a mental training technique as well.

ABRSM examinations board and registered charity based in London, UK

The ABRSM is an examinations board and registered charity based in London, UK, which provides examinations in music at centres around the world. ABRSM is one of four examination boards accredited by Ofqual to award graded exams and diploma qualifications in music within the UK's National Qualifications Framework. 'The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music' was established in 1889 and rebranded as ABRSM in 2009. The clarifying strapline "the exam board of the Royal Schools of Music" was introduced in 2012.

The Secret Life of Cello Strings

In 1996 Bosanquet published "The Secret Life of Cello Strings: Harmonics for Cellists", a method book designed to aid cellists in playing harmonics. [5] In the introduction, Bosanquet stated that she was intrigued by the appearance of harmonics in places such as “the ethereal notes at the end of Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, the bell-like pentatonic notes in Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, the spectacular leaps in the second movement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, the glissando harmonics in Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata, the march in Britten’s Cello Sonata and the magical sound of four-part cellos playing high-stopped harmonics in Arvo Pärt’s Fratres; glissando stopped harmonics in the March of Britten's cello sonata; and sudden changes of pitch and colour on single notes in Webern's Three Pieces.” [6] She took a logical and scientific approach to categorising the possible harmonics on the cello, possibly inspired by her father's related work in the field of Fourier transforms. [1] The book guides the player progressively through the different harmonics that can be played, including maps of the nodes of the cello string.

Harmonic

A harmonic is any member of the harmonic series. The term is employed in various disciplines, including music, physics, acoustics, electronic power transmission, radio technology, and other fields. It is typically applied to repeating signals, such as sinusoidal waves. A harmonic of such a wave is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the frequency of the original wave, known as the fundamental frequency. The original wave is also called the 1st harmonic, the following harmonics are known as higher harmonics. As all harmonics are periodic at the fundamental frequency, the sum of harmonics is also periodic at that frequency. For example, if the fundamental frequency is 50 Hz, a common AC power supply frequency, the frequencies of the first three higher harmonics are 100 Hz, 150 Hz, 200 Hz and any addition of waves with these frequencies is periodic at 50 Hz.

An nth characteristic mode, for n > 1, will have nodes that are not vibrating. For example, the 3rd characteristic mode will have nodes at L and L, where L is the length of the string. In fact, each nth characteristic mode, for n not a multiple of 3, will not have nodes at these points. These other characteristic modes will be vibrating at the positions L and L. If the player gently touches one of these positions, then these other characteristic modes will be suppressed. The tonal harmonics from these other characteristic modes will then also be suppressed. Consequently, the tonal harmonics from the nth characteristic modes, where n is a multiple of 3, will be made relatively more prominent.

Fourier transform mathematical transform that expresses a mathematical function of time as a function of frequency

The Fourier transform (FT) decomposes a function of time into its constituent frequencies. This is similar to the way a musical chord can be expressed in terms of the volumes and frequencies of its constituent notes. The term Fourier transform refers to both the frequency domain representation and the mathematical operation that associates the frequency domain representation to a function of time. The Fourier transform of a function of time is itself a complex-valued function of frequency, whose magnitude (modulus) represents the amount of that frequency present in the original function, and whose argument is the phase offset of the basic sinusoid in that frequency. The Fourier transform is not limited to functions of time, but the domain of the original function is commonly referred to as the time domain. There is also an inverse Fourier transform that mathematically synthesizes the original function from its frequency domain representation.

Death

Bosanquet died of cancer, aged 72, on 20 January 2013. [1]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Caroline Bosanquet". The Times. 2013-02-16. ISSN   0140-0460 . Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  2. ↑ "Bosanquet biography". www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  3. 1 2 ed. Stowell, Robin (1999). The Cambridge Companion to the Cello. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. x. ISBN   9780521629287.CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ Bosanquet, R. Caroline (1987). "The Alexander Principle and its Importance to Music Education". British Journal of Music Education. 4 (3): 229–242.
  5. ↑ "R.Caroline Bosanquet: Secret Life of Cello Strings (Harmonics for Cellists) | Presto Sheet Music". www.prestoclassical.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  6. ↑ Bosanquet, R. Caroline (1996). The Secret Life of Cello Strings: Harmonics for Cellists. SJ Music. pp. ii. ISBN   9780952820208.
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