Folk music: Luxembourg

in Leerssen, Joep (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe (2015)

FULL TEXT The first folksong collection in Luxembourg, Die luxemburger Volkslieder älterer Zeit, compiled by the folklorist and ethnologist Edmond de la Fontaine (alias Dicks, 1823-1891), was published ... [more ▼]

FULL TEXT The first folksong collection in Luxembourg, Die luxemburger Volkslieder älterer Zeit, compiled by the folklorist and ethnologist Edmond de la Fontaine (alias Dicks, 1823-1891), was published posthumously in 1904. It contains only forty songs, and due to the unscientific way they had been collected, some important information is missing; nonetheless it offers a first glipse into folksongs in 19th-century Luxembourg. Their lyrics were adapted to the Luxembourg context, although only a few songs originate from the country. A scholarly, methodical folksong collection following the model of Erk and Böhme’s Deutscher Liederhort (1893-94) was published in 1937, entitled Singendes Volk. Its author, Mattias Thill, a primary school teacher, spent about four decades collecting songs throughout the Grand Duchy; again, most songs are variants of existing songs of non-Luxembourgish origin, 65% from Germany and a mere 3% from France. The remaining 32% have Luxembourgish texts (which, again, speaks for their more complete integration into Luxembourg life, not necessarily for a Luxembourg origin). Indigenous songs are often related to the military history and to the fortress of Luxembourg. Folk music in Luxembourg is predominantly vocal, with the one curious exception of a mystical blind violin-playing minstrel, Matthias Schou (alias Blannen Theis, 1747-1824) who was led from parish fair to parish fair by his wife and entertained the peasant population with his songs. Until today no sources have been discovered, but it is assumed that this troubadour is at the origin of melodies gathered a century later. In three cases, songs were subsequently arranged to instrumental music at a later date and gained a persistent performative presence to the point of becoming markers of Luxembourgish musical identity: the Wilhelmus, the Song of the dancing Procession, and the Hämmelsmarsch The Wilhelmus is the anthem of the Grand-Ducal court (not of the country), and is performed at the occasion of an official appearance of the Grand-Duke or of a member of his family. The melody is a variant of the Dutch national anthem Wilhelmus van Nassouwe, evidently based on Mozart’s Seven variations on Wilem Van Nassau (1766, KV 25) The “Song of the Dancing Procession” originates from the famous Procession of Echternach, and is based on the German folksong Adam hatte sieben Söhn’, arranged to a Rheinländerpolka for wind band in a medium tempo suitable for pilgrims taking three steps forward and two steps backwards. The Hämmelsmarsch, a beggar song derived from a 14th-century shepherd’s fair song, was played by pipers and drummers while visitors had to pay a fee. Modern-day local wind bands maintain this tradition, strolling the streets during parish fairs and requesting financial donations while playing this song. [less ▲]

Valuing American options using fast recursive projections

E-print/Working paper (2015)

We introduce a fast and widely applicable numerical pricing method that uses recursive projections. We characterize its convergence speed. We find that the early exercise boundary of an American call ... [more ▼]

We introduce a fast and widely applicable numerical pricing method that uses recursive projections. We characterize its convergence speed. We find that the early exercise boundary of an American call option on a discrete dividend paying stock is higher under the Merton and Heston models than under the Black-Scholes model, as opposed to the continuous dividend case. A large database of call options on stocks with quarterly dividends shows that adding stochastic volatility and jumps to the Black-Scholes benchmark reduces the amount foregone by call holders failing to optimally exercise by 25%. Transaction fees cannot fully explain the suboptimal behavior. [less ▲]

Que faire pour accroitre l'attractivité des fonds de capital-risque européens (EuVECA) et des fonds d'entrepreneuriat social européens (EuSEF) ?

in Bulletin Joly Bourse (2015)

Path planning self-learning algorithm for a dynamic chaning environment

Scientific Conference (2015, December)

The relevance of Human Robot Interaction to complement human skills in a manufacturing environment with industrial robots increases the concerns over safety of human and the robot. It is necessary to ... [more ▼]

The relevance of Human Robot Interaction to complement human skills in a manufacturing environment with industrial robots increases the concerns over safety of human and the robot. It is necessary to identify collision risks and avoid them otherwise production stops may cost a huge amount to the industry. A robot working at manufacturing facility should be able to predict potential collisions and must be able to prevent i.e. react automatically for safe detour around obstacle/human. Currently, industrial robots are able to detect collisions after a real contact but the existing proposals for avoiding collisions are either computationally expensive or not very well adapted to human safety. The objective of this paper is to provide intelligence to the industrial robot to predict collision risks and react automatically without stopping the production in a static environment. The proposed approach using Time of Flight (TOF) camera, provides decision regarding trajectory correction and improvement by shifting robot to a secure position. The application presented in this paper is for safe KUKA robot trajectory generation in peg-in-hole assembly process in the laboratory context. [less ▲]

A Car Hacking Experiment: When Connectivity meets Vulnerability

in Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps), 2015 IEEE (2015, December)

Interconnected vehicles are a growing commodity providing remote access to on-board systems for monitoring and controlling the state of the vehicle. Such features are built to facilitate and strengthen ... [more ▼]

Interconnected vehicles are a growing commodity providing remote access to on-board systems for monitoring and controlling the state of the vehicle. Such features are built to facilitate and strengthen the owner’s knowledge about its car but at the same time they impact its safety and security. Vehicles are not ready to be fully connected as various attacks are currently possible against their control systems. In this paper, we analyse possible attack scenarios on a recently released all-electric car and investigate their impact on real life driving scenarios. We leverage our findings to change the behaviour of safety critical components of the vehicle in order to achieve autonomous driving using an Open Vehicle Monitoring System. Furthermore, to demonstrate the potential of our setup, we developed a novel mobile application able to control such vehicle systems remotely through the Internet. We challenge the current state-of-the-art technology in today’s vehicles and provide a vulnerability analysis on modern embedded systems. [less ▲]

Assessing the effect of unknown widespread perturbations in complex systems using the mu-gap

in EEE Conference on Decision and Control, Osaka, Japan, December 2015 (2015, December)

Economic recessions and cognitive function in older age. Evidence from SHARE and HRS

Presentation (2015, December)

Early-Stage Assessment for Office Buildings concerning thermal comfort , energy efficiency amd sustainabilty

in 14th International Building Simulation Conference BS 2015 (2015, December)

The building facade greatly influences energy demand, internal comfort and environmental quality of office buildings. This paper shows the influence of relevant design parameters for highly glazed systems ... [more ▼]

The building facade greatly influences energy demand, internal comfort and environmental quality of office buildings. This paper shows the influence of relevant design parameters for highly glazed systems. In detail constructive and technical measures have been evalutated to optimise light weight composite and solid structures in European climate. The structure type and the glazing share indeed have some influence on the energetic and thermal behaviour of the building but the influence of the ventilation strategy is significantly higher. However, in case of an adequate ventilation strategy, the structure type becomes more decisive if a thermal optimisation, especially a reduction of the over-heating risk, shall be achieved. [less ▲]

Bestandsaufnahme zum Thema Verhütung und Sexualität: Auswertung der Umfrag "Gëff Gummi"

Report (2015)

New avenues for educational large-scale assessments. The use of log-file data in PISA

Scientific Conference (2015, December)