Listening to Bach

Author(s):  
Daniel R. Melamed

Modern audiences can learn to listen to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor BWV 232 and Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 in ways that reflect eighteenth-century sensibilities and that recognize our place in the tradition of the works’ performance and interpretation. The sacred music of Bach’s time recognized both old and new styles. In the Mass in B Minor, Bach contrasts, combines, and reconciles them to make a musical point. Listeners can also learn to hear musical types and musical topics that were significant in the eighteenth century, including sleep arias, love duets, and secular choral arias, and how Bach put these types to use. A sensitivity to musical style also offers ways to listen to and think about music created by parody—the reuse of music with new words—like almost all of the Mass in B Minor and most of the Christmas Oratorio. Parody, though interesting, is almost never audible and is of little consequence compared with what listening tells us about a piece. Modern performances are stamped with audible consequences of our place in the twenty-first century. The ideological choices we make in performing the Mass and the Oratorio, the present-day way of performing the Christmas work in relation to the calendar, and the legacy of reception and interpretation have all affected the way his music is understood and heard today.

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
Edward Schneider

From this translation of a French treatise on the Gascon way to preserve geese, ducks, other poultry and their fat, we learn how to house, fatten and butcher these birds, how to render their fat, how to prepare confit, how to store it and how to use it. To anyone familiar with the way confit is made today, few of the instructions will seem surprising; setting aside the technology to which it refers, this text provides a perfectly valid guide to confit-making in the twenty-first century. What is surprising, though, is that (in the view of the curator of the museum that owns the manuscript) this is a nineteenth-century copy of an eighteenth-century text, reflecting an if-it-ain't-broke attitude that may be instructive in these fix-it-anyway times.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146954052110396
Author(s):  
Kevin P. Bingham

This article begins with two central ideas – that feelings of rage appear to be on the increase in present modernity and that one of the main sources of rage is directly linked to consumer culture and the retail experience it fosters. Although retail trade allows twenty-first century individuals to spend their money on material goods and experiences which provide structure and a sense of meaning and belonging, what it also causes is ambivalence, insecurity and anxiety. These are formidable feelings that cause irritation, frustration and anger to gradually fester until it accumulates into something violent that distorts the way an individual thinks, acts and treats other people. With these points in mind, what this article provides is a thorough sociological interpretation of twenty-first century retail rage. Veering away from existing interpretations of rage by drawing on Herbert Marcuse’s analysis and image of a one-dimensional society, what this article explores is the idea that retail experiences turn people into individuals who are bound and controlled by a consumer duty. As I contend, based on my unique position as a researcher turned retail worker, it is this administered, one-dimensional kind of lifestyle that cultivates rage. To support my argument and understand more comprehensively how and why retail breeds frustration and anger, I use a selection of narrative episodes to unpack three key sources of consumer rage in the twenty-first century. These sources have been labelled instantaneity, performativity and unfulfillment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Mahlamäki ◽  
Tomas Mansikka

This article discusses the relationship between Western esotericism and literature. As an example of a secular author who uses and benefits from esoteric texts, ideas and thoughts as resources in creating a literary artwork, the article analyses Laura Lindstedt’s novel Oneiron. A Fantasy About the Seconds After Death (2015). It contextualises the novel within the frames of Western esotericism and literature, focusing on Emanuel Swedenborg’s impact on discourses of the afterlife in literature. Laura Lindstedt’s postmodern novel indicates various ways that esoteric ideas, themes, and texts can work as resources for authors of fiction in twenty-first century Finland. Since the late eighteenth century Swedenborg’s influence has been evident in literature and among artists, especially in providing resources for other-worldly imagery. Oneiron proves that the ideas of Swedenborg are still part of the memory of Western culture and literature.


Authorship ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephine Dougal

Robert Burns, the eighteenth-century Scottish poet and song writer, continues to maintain a substantial cultural ‘afterlife’ in the twenty first century, both within Scotland and beyond. Achieving cult status in the nineteenth century, the power of Burns as a popular cultural icon remains undiminished. Where the appropriation of Burns as national icon in the nineteenth century was made manifest in statuary, commemorative objects, and painted portraits, the twenty-first century has been marked by the proliferation of the image of Burns in new forms and  technologies, with Burns as product and brand logo, museum and heritage attraction, and tourism industry selling point. This recent flourishing of interest and engagement raises questions about why and how an eighteenth-century poet continues to be the object of such extensive cultural elaboration at this time. In approaching this question, some fruitful lines of enquiry are being suggested in recent discussions that have looked at the nineteenth-century Burns as a ‘mobilizing agent in collective memory production’ (Rigney 2011, 81). One such appraisal points to how the construction of Burns in the nineteenth century as an iconic figure of Scottish cultural memory has the potential to ‘be resignified as necessary in subsequent chronological and geographical sites’ (Davis 2010, 14). It is this potential for the resignification of Burns as a symbolic site for the nation’s memory that this paper explores. In pointing to Burns’ representation in a variety of popular forms and in public discourse, the paper examines how a writer comes to be invested and reinvested as the voice and persona of the nation.


Author(s):  
Brian Lehaney ◽  
Steve Clarke ◽  
Elayne Coakes ◽  
Gillian Jack

If you want quick-fix solutions, this book is not for you. If you want to “dare to know” how to look at an organisation differently, harness the power of its knowledge, and create innovative and effective systems, then please read on! Knowledge management has been one of the most hyped phrases over the first years of the twenty-first century, and it has been mooted as the way forward for organisations to be dynamic, flexible, competitive, and successful. Despite the hype, and despite some individual successes, western economies and organisations may not have been greatly affected by this ‘all singing, all dancing’ solution to organisations’ problems. Has the impact of knowledge management been less than expected? If so, why? In order to address these questions, there are a number of others that must also be considered, such as: What is knowledge management? Why did it arise in the first place? Can it be simplified or categorised? Is it a fad? Is it theoretical? Is it practical? Why should I care about it? What can it do for my organisation? Does it provide a quick and easy solution?


Film Reboots ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Erin Hanna

This chapter looks to Star Trek, a reboot that employed a time travel narrative to simultaneously cast the Star Trek universe as a new continuity and strategically recast iconic characters in a parallel timeline. The chapter asserts that the reinvention of Star Trek property as a twenty-first-century blockbuster required an investment not only in its narrative strategies, but also in a discursively reimagined audience, one that included both pre-existing and future fans. It demonstrates the way in which Star Trek highlights the intersecting logics of the film reboot and the mainstreaming of fandom in popular culture, both of which grow out of serial strategies designed to exploit new and established markets.


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