Abstract
Giovanni Francesco Bernadone, better known as Francis of Assisi, is a celebrated saint. Theologians generally view him as a loyal Catholic who adhered strictly to his faith. However, during his life in the early thirteenth century, there was very little choice other than Catholicism if one wished to avoid execution. Clearly, Protestantism did not exist and would not for three more centuries. In spite of this fact, I would like to show that Francis clearly practiced what the modern world might consider protestant ideals. Even when diluted, his ideas were so revolutionary that they have survived for centuries making him a household name. Though it is clear that he was a saint who was loyal to the Catholic Church, there is some evidence that he was unconsciously an early reformer working within the framework of the Church. This paper will attempt to explore the possibility that he, aside from his celibacy, was, in many ways, unknowingly a prototype protestant.
Klein, P. (2014). Giovanni Francesco Bernadone a Proto-Protestant Reformer. American Journal of Biblical Theology, 15(4).
Abstract
This article is written for the benefit of piano teachers and students but can be of benefit to any music teacher or student. It is a case study using Prokofiev’s lesser-known pedagogical work for the piano, which serves as an example of information gathering to apply toward a more effective method of instruction, which requires the teacher and student to exhaustively examine both composer and music in order to exact a more artistic, accurate performance. Much of the interpretation is based on Prokofiev’s own thoughts as expressed in his personal memoirs and from his most distinguished music critics, many of whom were his peers during his lifetime, while some are taken from common sources, which are readily available to both teacher and student. It is my belief that it is possible to divine extraordinary interpretations, information, and outcomes from common sources. As the student and teacher gather information, it can be used to determine what should be included in a performance, based not only on the composer’s explicit directions but also on implicit information that could lead to an inspired, original interpretation. It is written with the belief that music is more than the dots and lines on the page and that teaching and learning must be approached with that in mind. It is hoped that once teacher and student have completed this case study, the method will transfer to all future musical endeavors.
65: a comprehensive approach to learning about a composer and his works: biography, style, form and analysis. SpringerPlus, 3(1), 23. https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-1801-3-23
Abstract
Robert Greenleaf mentioned Asian inspiration in his conception of servant leadership. However, he appears to have developed a model that is best suited for application in the west, since Mittal and Dorfman showed in 2012 that servant leadership might not work well in Asia. Despite the Asian inspiration giving shape to Greenleaf’s servant leadership theory, essential eastern elements may have been omitted in the formation of his model, making it less palatable to Asian cultures. This paper hopes to demonstrate that cultural influences on the leadership paradigm in Asia cannot be ignored if servant leadership is to be embraced there.
Klein, P. (2020). Making Servant Leadership Work in South Korea. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS), 71(1), 229–261.
Abstract
Korea has been a homogenous culture for over five thousand years. Although it has faced incursions and occupations, it has always repelled those advances and maintained racial, linguistic, and cultural purity with surprising resoluteness. However, Korea’s modernization and economic expansion required alliances and policies that introduced multicultural forces into its once pure society, creating sizable racial minorities for the first time in history. The government’s shift from authoritarian rule to liberal democracy has given voice to these minorities. These groups are demanding admittance to an exclusive society, along with equal and humane treatment. The people and government of Korea are now faced with the dilemma of dispensing with the exclusive dominance of their age-old, ‘pure’ culture to accommodate different ethnicities and practices. This paper will discuss the problems and potential solutions, including one that may already exist untapped in the Korean constitution.
Klein, P. (2022). Racial Discrimination in South Korea: Korean Academics Offer Proposals for a Solution, but What if the Solution is Inherent to the Korean Constitution? American Academic Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS), 86(1), 174–191.
Abstract
When students undertake English studies, one might assume that their natural drive and curiosity for the subject would lead them. However, in Korea, my observation is that most students study English at the behest of some influential force or figure in their lives or that it is a compulsory requirement not because it is their own earnest passion. This paper will attempt to answer that question. I have surveyed 359 students directly at two average Korean universities about their personal feelings about the importance of learning English. I hope to determine whether, despite the hardships, they think it is worth the effort or if they are simply learning to please overzealous parents, school, and government administrators or prepare for the corporate sector’s current hiring requirements.
Klein, P. (2022). Perceptions of the Importance of Studying English among Average Korean University Students. International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research (IJSBAR), 62(1), 55–68.
Abstract
A simple explanation of this composition is that it is the world’s oldest notated music combined with modern 20th-century music theory that eschews traditional melody and harmony for synthetic scales. This musical piece is comprised of two twelve-tone rows, atonal music based on synthetic scales unique to each composition, which are based on medieval plainsong chants whose systemization was begun by Pope Gregory I during the sixth century AD. The music is complex and dissonant, although the conversion of the two plainsong chants to twelve-tone rows retains a semblance of a tonal center at given points throughout. Still, the entire piece of music is that same melody utilized harmonically: just forward, backward, upside-down, backward and upside-down, rhythmically altered, transposed, displaced up or down. I have also borrowed the Baroque Period techniques of the two-part invention and four-voice fugue combined with serial musical techniques that may offend the average listener’s traditional musical sensibilities but make logical structural sense. I used the Dies Irae (The Day of Wrath) and Tuba Mirum (The Last Trumpet Call). You can hear the bugle call throughout the piece. The authorship of the chants has been attributed to many saints from Gregory to Thomas of Celano but probably evolved from early Jewish psalmody carried forward by the earliest Jewish converts to Christianity, which further developed into trochaic metered poetry by successive monks. It was set to memorized plainsong heralding back, in part, to Jewish worship. The text of the Dies Irae is very similar to Zephaniah 1:16, the last trumpet call that raises the dead. The music is still movingly visceral because of its conceptually descriptive nature. It is full of aural symbolism following the Dies Irae and the Tuba Mirum. The music is, still movingly visceral because of its conceptually descriptive nature. It is full of aural symbolism following the Dies Irae and the Tuba Mirum. The music is, therefore, genuinely eclectic because it has blended qualities of several musical periods.
Klein, P. (2021). Dies Irae Dodecaphonic. SMP Press.
Abstract
This is a programmatic, neo-romantic/post-romantic fragment/miniature. Fragment in the sense that it is not fully developed, yet, in a sense, it is overdeveloped for its length. There are several modern elements in that it is bitonal at one point. At another point, I pit Scriabin’s mystic chord which is his synthetic mode, against what I feel is its nearest aeolian mode, c-minor, which is modernistically dissonant. It is written in ‘classicized’ AABA popular song form. It revolves around the programmatic, free verse ‘Prayer,’ a plea to God for sleep, elusive due to the mourning of lost love and the associated emptiness and grief felt deep in the night. It is motivic in that there is a repeated augmented 6 to a half-diminished cadence that simply transitions into the theme, but also ends each small section statement in a secondary dominant style repetition until tonic is reached. -Section A1 is a simple statement of the linear theme and harmony in 6ths, 9ths, and 12ths, which approaches the original motivic cadence with a variation of itself, secondary dominant style, to the repeat in its original form. -A2 is a restatement of that theme with an added countermelody (which becomes the subject of section B) woven between the upper linear melody and the altered bass accompaniment. -B begins with a short statement of the countermelody bi-tonally, the left hand in c minor, the right in g minor. There is a brief transposition between several keys in both hands, which builds in dynamics and intensity to a diminished chord that moves up half a step. Simultaneously, the pedal holds on to the previous chord, fading as a Scriabin mystic chord’s dissonance melds with it. -A3 starts with the motivic cadence and a deep bass pedal tone. This section is the crowning moment in the piece. In sixths, the macabre accompaniment moves to the right-hand upper tessitura as the more developed ‘A’ melody moans below in the bass and baritone as the music ebbs away. Finally, a simple c-minor arpeggio strains against a very similar Scriabin mystic chord arpeggio, an octave or a minor seventh apart, ending on an A major and A flat in sweet, gentle, unresolved dissonance against a dying root pedal tone. The final teardrop.
Klein, P. (2020). A Prayer and a Prelude Preview. SMP Press.
