Mendelssohn Bicentennial

Sometime ago we mentioned the bicentennial of Charles Darwin & Abraham Lincoln. They are truly great men in their fields---science & humanity. There is another great man (also born in 1809) in the field of music that deserves our admiration. His is Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn. Most of us know some of his music. He was a child prodigy and born to a wealthy family. He was more conservative comparing with some of his contemporaries like Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner et al. Because of his Jewish blood (although he was converted to Lutheran), his music was shunned in Germany from time to time especially during WWII. He was one of the greatest composers in the period of Musical Romanticism.
He revived Bach’s St. Matthew Passion & made Bach’s music popular. He was the first to conduct Schubert’s symphony #9, the Great. This work was buried under a pile of papers in some attic for more than 10 years after Schubert’s death. Mendelssohn's most popular works include Wedding March (from Midsummer Night’s Dream), Violin Concerto in E Minor, Italian symphony, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Spring Song (song without word, piano work), auf flugeln des Gesanges (On Wings of Song) etc.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: He composed the overture while he was 17. He finished the work 16 years later. The overture is open with a theme & end with the same theme that sounds like a curtain call, the opening and the closing of the Shakespeare’s play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUm1HU29TfI&feature=PlayList&p=C40130D5C035CDC3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=6
(opening)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-SLeBjvg8g&feature=PlayList&p=C40130D5C035CDC3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=7
(closing)
Wedding March: Mendelssohn befriended with Queen Victoria. This wedding march was played when the Queen married her daughter to Frederick of Prussia in 1858. If you have watched “Fall of Eagles” (BBC TV series), you know the episode. Since that time, this wedding march becomes one of the most popular classical music played in the wedding ceremony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tDYMayp6Dk
Violin Concerto in E minor: This one was very popular while we were in Taida. It was played at least once a month from some radio stations in Taipei. This concerto is unique in its opening. The violin solo just ushers in playing the main theme without any introduction. If you are familiar with other great violin concertos by Beethoven, Brahms or Tchaikovsky, you will know what I mean. You can find the first movement of this concerto played by Heifetz from the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27n4rQ-VIT8
Spring Song: This is a piano work, song without words. It depicts the glorious spring will definitely come to an end. However, it is worth the effort & time to enjoy the last trace of the season. Almost everybody loves this song and I bet you all know the tune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tkqdOB5bEw&feature=related
Italian Symphony: Mendelssohn composed this piece when he traveled to Italy. This is generally considered the best one among his five symphonies. The whole piece is filled with romantic mood & the lovely melodies flow effortlessly throughout the four movements. The following link is the 1st movement of this symphony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIITKVYrHvQ
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing: One of the most popular Christmas carol in our time was composed by Mendelssohn. I bet we all listened to this hymn at least 20 times during Christmas holidays.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDPwNPAV6tA
Auf Flugeln des Gesanges: This is a lovely song composed for the work by Heine (1797-1856), a famous German lyric poet. Heine was like Mendelssohn with Jewish blood converted to Lutheran. His another famous poem is “Die Lorelei”. If you have ever cruised river Rhine, you know the Lorelei Rock, its romantic & tragic tale. Auf Flugeln des Gesanges is “On Wings of Song” in English. You will love it when you listen to it. I think most of you already familiar with the melody & will not get tired of it even you listen to it 10 more times. In the following link you will find the lyrics in German, English & Chinese (click “more info”). Please compare the content and meaning of the poem among different languages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc4QC35LfhU
The soprano is Victoria de los Angeles (1923-2005), a well known operatic soprano.
In order to follow the music, you may note the following:
Die Lotosblumen erwarten
Ihr trautes Schwesterlein
(repeat once)
Und in der Ferne rauschen
Des heilgen Stromes Well'n
(repeat once)
Und träumen seligen Traum
(repeat once)
seligen Traum
(repeat once more)
PS: This one has nothing to do with Mendelssohn. If you have ever watched the movie "Death in Venice", (1971, based on Thomas Mann's Novel), you will not forget that moody melody permeated throughout the movie. The theme is from the 4th movement of Mahler's symphony #5. If you are interested, go to the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kpJehOi2p4

台大電机系軼事之一

Hedy Lamarr
Occupation: Actor, Inventor
Most Beautiful Electrical Engineer?

In our third year of EE life, most of us took a course called “Transmission Lines”. I remember the lecturer was not a resident professor. His name was 繆超鳳. He looked like a well-groomed gentleman. He was slim, clean-cut & soft spoken. For some reason, his lectures were not well received. A lot of time, we were all chatting or doing something else, even clipping finger nails in his class. I sort of felt sorry for him. Sometime I tried to focus on what he said. But it was in vain due to the high noise level, ie signal/noise ratio is too low. Professor 繆 had good temper. He seemed not upset at all, a truly gentleman behavior. He probably worked in 交通部 or 電信局 at that time. I had no doubt that he was well versed in the subject. He somehow just lacked some zest or charisma that would attract our attention. I don’t know how many of us still remember what we learned from that class. Transmission Line is a branch of knowledge or discipline nested between Lump Circuit Theory & EM Wave Theory. It was very useful when telegraphy ruled the world between 1860 to 1900. Even today, we see the transmission towers & high voltage lines across the island and continent. Theoretically, the lump theory & transmission line can all be deduced from Maxwell equations with suitable boundary conditions. Transmission line is also a one-dimensioned distribution of lump theory.

Once in a while we heard of Oliver Heaviside. For example, Heaviside’s Partial Expansion, Heaviside’s Unit Function, Heaviside’s Distortionless line & Heaviside Layer. Actually he was instrumental in developing Transmission Line & Operational Calculus. He introduced D or P operator to solve differential equations in an algebraic fashion. We have learned all the trade under the title of Laplace Transformation. It is shameful that most textbooks fail to mention his genius and contribution to the Electrical Engineering.

There are some similarities between Heaviside (1850-1925) & Edison (1847-1931). Both of them lived around the same time. Both of them were telegraph operators, well versed in Morse Code. Both of them were self-taught engineer & lacked of formal education in mathematics. Perhaps due to this, their works lacked of rigorous proof & procedure. However, Heaviside got the credit to reduce Maxwell’s 20 equations in 20 variables to 4 equations & four variables. In fact, what we know about Maxwell’s equation is in the form worked by Heaviside. In 1902 Heaviside predicted that there was an conducting layer in the atmosphere which allowed radio waves to follow the Earth’s curvature. This layer is later called Heaviside Layer. Perhaps Heaviside has become widely known due to a song by Andrew Lloyd Webber: "Journey to the Heaviside Layer" in the American Musical Cats.

Edison was a great inventor but he missed out the industry of power transmission & distribution. He advocated Direct Current instead of Alternating Current. Here came another genius Charles Steinmetz we don’t hear often enough. Steinmetz was a German got problem with Otto Von Bismarck & fled to the US. He worked in GE & was instrumental in promoting Alternating Current over Direct Current. He worked out most of the mathematical & engineering details relating to how the alternating current would be used in the power transmission.

PS1: "Journey to the Heaviside Layer" can be found in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvsRZ8FVx4o
The lyrics are very simple:
Up, up, up, past the Russell Hotel
Up, up, up, up, to the Heaviside Layer

repeated several times.

PS2: Do you know the most beautiful electrical engineer in history? The answer is Hedy Lamarr (海蒂拉瑪). She was the heroine of the famous movie “Samson & Delilah” (霸王妖姬, 1949). Here were some headlines:
How was Hedy Lamarr’s wartime invention revolutionizing wireless communications?
How “The Bad Boy of Music” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” catalyzed a Wireless Revolution in 1941?
People assume that perhaps Hedy Lamarr wasn’t intelligent because she was so beautiful. But she really had a mind…she held her own with anybody.
Hedy Lamaar & Spread Spectrum
Frequency-Hopping Spread-Spectrum Invention & Hedy Lamaar
Spread Spectrum & Internet

The following link has info about her invention:
http://britneyspears.ac/physics/intro/hedy.htm

The issue June 23, 1997 of MicroTimes magazine was dedicated to her achievement. Sadly, she passed away in 2000. Her ashes were spread in the romantic Vienna Woods.

大一國文

國文課堂---臨時教室

The photos of our classmates & the campus of Taida remind me of our good old college days.  I wrote this down just in case I forget it later.  Our memory inevitably fades when time goes by.  We had to learn 國文 or 國語 since we were a kid in elementary school.  With so many years of learning, I wonder why we need to do it again in college.  As a matter of fact, 大一國文 was one of the worst I have ever experienced.  We had a famous professor 黃得時.  He was noted for his research in some area of Chinese literature.  But his accent was really out of place.  Fortunately we were not learning the pronunciation of Mandarin, otherwise it was going to be a disaster. The worst part was that we had to study 左傳 & 戰國策.  They are so ancient & the writing styles are so out of time.   It would be much better to study some modern Chinese literature.  But for some political reason, we just couldn’t do it.  Most famous literary figures were in mainland & couldn’t be mentioned.   Those who fled to Taiwan were second rate figures at best. Some good one like 胡適 or 林語堂 went to US & stayed there until late 1950’s. Who had heard of 鲁迅, 葉聖陶, 茅盾, 老舍, or 朱光潛 in Taiwan?  All in all, 大一國文 was totally a waste of time to me.

I have to say something about 黃得時.   His ancestry was from 福建泉州.  He made contribution in Taiwan literature, especially in the preservation of 臺灣鄉土戲曲 & 兒童文學之編譯.  His unfinished work is 臺灣文學史 .  He was a professor of 台大中文系.  I have a lot of respect for him though he had some interesting behavior.  Here is what I remember about him:

1. He had some problem in walking.  I don’t know whether it was due to polio or some accidents.  His head looked bigger than normal with his body size.
2. He called roll at the beginning of every class.  As far as I can remember: 每堂課點名,風雨無阻.  To make the whole thing worse, the class started promptly at 8:00 am.  To get up early in the cold winter & ride bicycle to 大一教室 before 8am definitely was a pain in the neck. My home was near 新生北路 & 南京東路, not really close to the campus.  Here I sort of envied my classmates from southern Taiwan.  They stayed at 台大宿舍 & could reach 大一教室 in no time. Anyway, worst thing did happen to me (Murphy’s Law), my name happened to be the first one in the roll call.   I still remember Professor 黃's voice (first thing in the class): 林幸峰, 黃肇崶, … If I was not in the classroom in time, I missed the class. I think 黃肇崶 must have shared the same misery.  So once in a while, I found that I was late about 5 minutes, I simply skipped the class & murmured “Go ahead, make my day”.  I still think it is a joke to do roll call in a university like Taida. It is an insult to freshmen.  I don’t know any professor did the same in our first year classes. Imagine if 徐照 or 葉炳雲 did the same thing, the class will be over before he finishes the roll call.
3. I met a lot of freshmen from 化工系 & 机械系 in the class.   I still remember two girls named 陳滿枝 & 陳星華 (化工系).  They were pretty nice looking. I forgot all the rest.
4. His Japanese or Taiwanese accent in reading Chinese text is not very polished. For a professor of 國文, it is definitely a minus. For 左傳 & 戰國策, it is ok.   But for "康橋的早晨”, it is going to sound like evening instead of the morning.
5. 黃得時 was noted for his research in Taiwan literature.  I wonder why shouldn’t he just teach Taiwan literature for the freshman class.   I think it was really a loss for us not taking advantage of his expertise.
6. Several years ago, while I performed my annual spring garage cleanup, I encountered something unexpected, three compositions of my freshman class.   Titles of the compositions are: 自敘, 我與國文, 台大一角.   I found the last one very refreshing & valuable.   It reminds me a lot of minor details about that little corner of Taida campus---Chemistry Lab & how we performed the experiments.  In the composition, I see all those hand-written comments in red by professor 黃得時. Ah…, that was almost 49 years ago. 往事如煙,字跡依舊.

PS: The early morning class forced me to get up early & reach the classroom before 8am.  Sometime I got there way early especially in the spring time.  Once I got into the classroom & found one girl was practicing violin.  She was probably from 女生宿舍 nearby.   In order not to disturb her, I sat way back in the corner & read a book.   I remember she played some scales & some work by Bach. A few minutes later, she started playing something slow & mellow.  I recognized it was Beethoven’s Romance #2(opus 50). Although her play was not that fluent, I could follow the main theme nicely.  After a few moments, I was sort of in a dream when the music kept flowing.  I didn’t know how long the time passed before she finished the playing & put the violin in the case.  She carried it in her hand & walked toward the door.   I kept watching her & finally decided to say hello to her.  But I was way back in the classroom & couldn’t catch her in time.  She simply disappeared from my eyes in no time. Since that morning, I had several occasions in that semester to be there early enough to catch her.  But she never showed up & I had never seen her again.

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