Porch and Playhouse, Parlor and Performance Hall: Traversing Boundaries in Gottschalk'sThe Banjo

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-183
Author(s):  
LAURA MOORE PRUETT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Music ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Concert Halls ◽  
Piano Composition ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Minstrel Shows ◽  
Class Divisions

AbstractThis article reconsiders the cultural significance and historical impact of the well-known virtuosic piano compositionThe Banjoby Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Throughout the early nineteenth century, the banjo and the piano inhabited very specific and highly contrasting performance circumstances: black folk entertainment and minstrel shows for the former, white middle- and upper-class parlors and concert halls for the latter. InThe Banjo, Louis Moreau Gottschalk lifted the banjo out of its familiar contexts and placed it in the spaces usually privileged for the piano. Taking its inspiration from both African American and minstrel banjo playing techniques, Gottschalk's composition relaxed and muddled the boundaries among performance spaces, racial and class divisions, and two conspicuously different musical instruments in an egalitarian effort to demonstrate that, contrary to the opinions of some mid-nineteenth-century musical critics and tastemakers, both the piano and the banjo have a place in the shaping of American music culture.

From Blackface to ‘Genuine Negroes’: Nineteenth-Century Minstrelsy and the Icon of the ‘Negro’

1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Minstrel Shows ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

In 1855, the first ‘coloured’ minstrel troupe, the Mocking Bird Minstrels, appeared on a Philadelphia stage. While this company did not stay together long, it heralded a change in the ‘face’ of minstrelsy in the United States. Many other black minstrel troupes would quickly follow, drawing attention away from the white minstrels who had until then dominated the scene. However, the white minstrel show had already iconized a particular representation of the ‘Negro’, which ultimately paved the way for black anti-minstrel attitudes at the end of the nineteenth century. The minstrel show existed in two guises: the white-in-blackface, and the black-in-blackface. The form and content of the minstrel shows changed over time, as well as audience perception of the two different types of performance. The black minstrel show has come to be regarded as a ‘reclaiming’ of slave dance and performance. It differs from white minstrelsy in that it gave theatrical form to ‘signifyin” on white minstrelsy in the manner in which slaves practised ‘signifyin” on whites in real life.

The Choice Between High-Pressure and Low-Pressure Steam Power in America in the Early Nineteenth Century

1981 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harlan I. Halsey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
High Pressure ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fuel Price ◽  
Steam Power ◽  
Pressure Steam ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Eastern Seaboard

In the early nineteenth century, five versions of stationary steam engines were in widespread use. In America, the high-pressure engine was dominant in the West, but on the eastern seaboard the low-pressure engine was viable. In Britain, the low-pressure engine was overwhelmingly dominant. Here we analyze the evidence on cost and performance of high- and low-pressure engines, and show that fuel-price and interest-rate differentials were sufficient to explain the distribution of steam engine types in America.

Shrine, Images, and Power: The Worship of Former Worthies in Early Nineteenth Century Suzhou

T oung Pao ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-195
Author(s):  
Seunghyun Han
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Similar Nature ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Elite ◽  
Building Activity ◽  
Xixe Siecle ◽  
Xixe Siècle

AbstractIn the 1820s, the literati of Suzhou embarked on a project to build a shrine devoted to the worship of local former worthies and engraved almost six hundred portraits of the latter on the shrine's inner walls. Since the locality already had a paired shrine of eminent officials and local worthies, as had become the case across the empire since the mid-Ming period, why did they need to create a shrine of a similar nature? What was the cultural significance of introducing visual representations of the worthies in the worship? By analyzing the multiple layers of meaning surrounding this shrine-building activity, the present study attempts to illuminate an aspect of the changing state-elite relations in the early nineteenth century. Au cours des années 1820 les lettrés de Suzhou s'engagèrent dans un projet de construction d'un sanctuaire dédié au culte des anciennes personnalités locales éminentes, sur les murs duquel furent gravés les portraits de près de six cents d'entre elles. Dans la mesure, où Suzhou possédait déjà deux sanctuaires, l'un pour les fonctionnaires éminents et l'autre pour les personnalités locales, comme c'était le cas partout dans l'Empire depuis le milieu des Ming, pourquoi fut-il jugé nécessaire d'en créer un autre de même nature? Que signifiait d'un point de vue culturel le fait d'introduire des représentations visuelles des personnalités en question dans les célébrations? En analysant les niveaux de sens multiples qui entourent cette activité de construction, le présent article s'efforce de mettre en lumière un aspect particulier du changement dans les relations entre l'État et les élites au début du xixe siècle.

Unrolling Egyptian mummies in nineteenth-century Britain

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
GABRIEL MOSHENSKA
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Geography ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Changing Attitudes

AbstractThe unrolling of Egyptian mummies was a popular spectacle in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. In hospitals, theatres, homes and learned institutions mummified bodies, brought from Egypt as souvenirs or curiosities, were opened and examined in front of rapt audiences. The scientific study of mummies emerged within the contexts of early nineteenth-century Egyptomania, particularly following the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822, and the changing attitudes towards medicine, anatomy and the corpse that led to the 1832 Anatomy Act. The best-known mummy unroller of this period was the surgeon and antiquary Thomas Pettigrew, author of the highly respected History of Egyptian Mummies. By examining the locations, audiences and formats of some of Pettigrew's unrollings this paper outlines a historical geography of mummy studies within the intellectual worlds of nineteenth-century Britain, illuminating the patterns of authority, respectability, place and performance that Pettigrew and his colleagues navigated with varying degrees of success.

RETHINKING EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY ASYLUM REFORM

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 425-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL BROWN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Cultural Ideologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lunatic Asylums ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Historical Issues

This article seeks, through the medium of a case study of the York Lunatic Asylum scandal of 1813 to 1815, to rethink aspects of the existing historiography of early nineteenth-century asylum reform. By moving away from the normative medical historical focus on ‘madness’ and ‘custody’, it relates the reform of lunatic asylums to the wider social, cultural, and political currents of the early nineteenth century. In particular, it demonstrates how the conflict over the administration of the York Asylum represented a clash between different conceptions of social power and public accountability which were rooted in mutually opposed cultural ideologies. In addition, by bringing more recent work on identity and performance to bear on a classic set of historical issues, it also seeks to investigate how the reform of lunatic asylums, and the cultural shifts which they embodied, impacted upon the social identities of medical practitioners engaged in the charitable care of the sick and mad.

The Bank of Stephen Girard, 1812–1831

1972 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 841-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald R. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Biographical Sketches ◽  
And Performance

The literature of economic history abounds with studies of nineteenth century banking. Unfortunately, most of these studies have drawbacks which make them of limited use to the modern student of economic history. The most serious drawback is their almost unanimously institutional character, punctuated here and there with biographical sketches of past bank presidents and directors. Those studies which do offer solid quantitative evidence on banking practice and performance are often based on aggregate statistics compiled by state or national banking commissions and thus preclude the study of individual institutions or small groups of institutions which may have played a key role in the development of early banking practices. This article represents a detailed investigation of the largest non-chartered bank of the early nineteenth century, the Bank of Stephen Girard.

A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Aids ◽  
Scientific Teaching ◽  
Glass Marble ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products ◽  
Wax Models

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.

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