An assessment of György Ligeti's intersecting identities in the context of cosmopolitanism and the history of modernist music.

Machine learning techniques have revolutionized the field of financial engineering by providing accurate and efficient methods for pricing American options. This research project aims to explore the effectiveness of deep learning algorithms in accurately pricing American options. The project is divided into two schemes: Scheme I employs a sequence of neural networks, while Scheme II utilizes a single aggregate neural network to eliminate time discretization. By testing various combinations of neural network hyperparameters in both schemes, we seek to optimize the accuracy and computational speed for pricing nine different Put and Call options. Our results are compared against existing efficient algorithms, such as polynomial regression and random forest, as documented in [5]. Based on the analysis of optimal hyperparameters that enhance the accuracy of machine learning-based American option pricing, we identify the top five solvers (hyperparameter sets) in Scheme I and the top two solvers in Scheme II. These solvers are benchmarked and reproducible, serving as reference points for future comparisons with prior studies.

As Esa-Pekka Salonen notes, György Ligeti ‘was the most cosmopolitan of composers, but, paradoxically, remained clearly defined in terms of his roots and language’. As a ‘rooted’ cosmopolitan and survivor of Nazi and Soviet occupations, Ligeti retained an inherent idealism that reached back to Kant's notion of a cosmopolitan, universal future, albeit one tempered by nostalgia and fatalism. In their incorporation of disparate cultural influences, the late works in particular exemplify a form of cultural contestation—distinct from mere pluralism or hybridity—known as the ‘cosmopolitan imagination’. This paper focuses on one manifestation of this cosmopolitan impulse in four vocal and instrumental compositions. Each work manifests a comic absurdity that neither mimics nor merges the music and text which inspire it, and which binds Ligeti's music to larger modernist themes.