The Secret of the Secret Chromatic Art

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-367
Author(s):  
Bonnie Gordon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Musica Ficta ◽  
Cultural Estrangement ◽  
The 1960S

In 1946, just after emigrating from Nazi Germany via the Netherlands and Cuba to the United States, Edward Lowinsky published The Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet. He posited a system of chromatic modulations through musica ficta in sixteenth-century Netherlandish polyphony circulated by clandestine heretic societies during the period of religious struggle in the Low Countries. According to Lowinsky, in the second half of the century a small contingent of northern musicians with radical Protestant sympathies wrote pieces that appeared on the surface to set texts and use diatonic melodies condoned by the Church. Beneath that compliant surface lurked secret chromaticism and seditious meanings that remained hidden from the Inquisition. Despite Lowinsky’s obvious interest in odd passages in motets of Clemens non Papa, Lassus, and others, I argue that his history as a Jew in Nazi Germany and then as an exile from that regime compelled his idiosyncratic hearing of sixteenth-century polyphony. A close reading of the text suggests that Lowinsky identified with the composers he wrote about and that he aligned Nazi Germany with the Catholic Inquisition. Beyond its engagement with music theory and cultural history, The Secret Chromatic Art delivers a modern narrative of oppressed minorities, authoritarian regimes, and the artistic triumph of the dispossessed. The Secret Chromatic Art matters today because its themes of displacement and cultural estrangement echo similar issues that Pamela Potter and Lydia Goehr have discerned in the work of other exiled musicians and scholars who migrated from Nazi-controlled Europe to the United States, and whose contributions helped shape our discipline. Moreover, Lowinsky’s theory figured prominently in the debate initiated by Joseph Kerman in the 1960s that pitted American criticism against German positivism, a polemic that is still with us today.

Small Is Beautiful

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyrus Schayegh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Economic

In scholarship on the Middle East, as on other regions of the world, the sort of social history that climaxed from the 1960s through the 1980s, and in Middle East history through the 1990s—that is, studies of categories such as “class” or “peasant”—has been declining for some time. The cultural history that replaced social history has peaked, too. In the 21st century, the trend, set by non-Middle East historians, has been to combine an updated social-historical focus on structure and groups with a cultural–historical focus on meaning making. Defining societyagainstculture and policing their boundaries is out. In is picking a theme—consumption or travel, say—then studying it from distinct yet linked social and cultural or political/economic angles. This trend has spawned new journals likeCultural and Social History, established in 2004, and has been debated in established journals and memoirs by leading historians of the United States and Europe.

Josef Von Sternberg

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaylyn Studlar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Charles Chaplin ◽  
Gangster Film ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Josef Von Sternberg

Born in Vienna, Austria in 1894 of working-class Jewish parents, Jonas Stern’s downtrodden young life did not hold the slightest indication that, as Josef von Sternberg, he would become one of the greatest visual stylists in the history of Hollywood filmmaking. His family settled permanently in the United States in 1908. After he finished school, he worked repairing film sprockets. During World War I, he enlisted in the Signal Corps to make training films, an experience that helped him get a minor foothold in the East Coast movie industry after the war. He flirted with building a career in Europe, but returned to the United States and moved to Hollywood. His first feature was The Salvation Hunters (1925), shot outdoors near the port of San Pedro and independently financed. It drew the attention of Charles Chaplin, who became the producer of von Sternberg’s next film, The Sea Gull, which ended in disaster—destroyed as a tax write-off. He was asked by Paramount to finish Children of Divorce (1927) when its director quit, which he did, marking his first work with this studio. He is credited with creating the first modern gangster film with his next assignment, Underworld (1927). Other important films followed at Paramount, but the thing that von Sternberg is best remembered for and, indeed, which was emphasized in his obituaries in 1969, was that he “discovered” Marlene Dietrich and cast her in The Blue Angel (1930), a Paramount/Ufa coproduction shot in Germany. Their six subsequent films together at Paramount in the early 1930s were not always popular or critically praised, but their visual beauty was indisputable, and they shaped the image of Dietrich as a star persona. Fired from Paramount in 1935 as a director because his difficult personality made him as unpopular with actors and technical talent as his films had become with audiences, von Sternberg was forced to go from studio to studio, and ultimately from country to country, to find work, until there was none for him. Yet, even at the time when he was regarded as a “has-been” by Hollywood, appreciation for his talents was nursed by experimental filmmakers and surrealists who praised him as a film stylist capable of creating stunning cinematic worlds with no equivalent in reality. In the 1960s he was elevated by a generation of auteur critics who regarded him as an exemplar of a filmmaker who imprints his work with his personality. In the 1970s, interest by scholars like Robin Wood and Laura Mulvey sparked a reconsideration of the erotic and ideological complexity of von Sternberg’s films, especially those starring Dietrich. Subsequently, writers focusing on cultural history and film theory have reframed the director’s films within considerations of gender, nation, race, and class, even as interest in narrative complexity, performance, and visual style is asserted in critical discourse.

scholarly journals Postindustrial Elite and Non-Elite Insecurities

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-75
Author(s):  
John Higley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Service Work ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

A society becomes postindustrial when 40 percent of its workforce is employed in bureaucratic and service work, a proportion that increases quite rapidly to 70-75, even 80 percent (cf. Bell 1999, xv). By the 1950s the composition of workforces in the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Canada had reached the 40 percent threshold to postindustrial conditions, and during the succeeding two or three decades virtually all other Western countries, plus Japan, crossed it. Quite unforeseen by nearly all observers at the time, non-elites in the first postindustrial societies began to divide into two loose interest and attitude camps during the 1960s and 1970s. The camps’ boundaries were not contiguous with those of the classes and strata that derived from the agricultural, manual industrial, and non-manual workforce components so prominent during historical socioeconomic development.

scholarly journals The Janus-Faced Shopping Center: The Low Countries in Search of a Fitting Shopping Paradigm

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 862-886
Author(s):  
Janina Gosseye
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Shopping Center ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
European Model ◽  
American Model

When in the mid-1950s, the shopping center typology reached the Low Countries, it confronted governments, policy makers, architects, and planners with the question of how to introduce and adapt this novel commercial typology to the local context. To respond to this question, several “missions” were organized to study this phenomenon abroad. The conclusion was that two distinct shopping center paradigms existed: the American model, as it could be observed in the United States and Canada, and the European model, as it had emerged in Sweden, France, and Great Britain. This article investigates what these missions identified as the distinctive characteristics of these two shopping center models, and which specific recommendations regarding urban and suburban retailing and distribution were derived from them. Finally, the article examines how these suggestions were implemented in or translated into the first shopping center designs in the Low Countries: “Shopping 1” in Genk (Belgium) and Amstelveen shopping center in the Netherlands.

Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History c.1720–1860

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Washbrook
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Commonwealth ◽  
The 1960S

Over the last fifteen to twenty years, interest in the history of early modern and modern South Asia has grown enormously and has engaged the attention of an increasingly international audience. Whereas, at the end of the 1960s, research in the subject was largely confined to universities in South Asia itself and the rest of the British Commonwealth, today a variety of projects, conferences and regular workshops link together scholars from South Asia and the Commonwealth with those in Japan, Indonesia, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe and the United States. Equally, whereas twenty years ago the publication of South Asia-related research was restricted to a few specialist journals, today this research provides the staple of at least four quarterlies with major international circulations and appears regularly in most of the leading historical periodicals. In the last five years, monographys on South Asia related historical subjects have been published by presses in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, the Soviet Union and Japan as well as, of course, India and Pakistan, the rest of the Commonwealth and the United States.

Having Their Say, Leaving Their Mark

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Adolphus G. Belk ◽  
Robert C. Smith ◽  
Sherri L. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Adverse Conditions ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Independent Organization

In general, the founders of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists were “movement people.” Powerful agents of socialization such as the uprisings of the 1960s molded them into scholars with tremendous resolve to tackle systemic inequalities in the political science discipline. In forming NCOBPS as an independent organization, many sought to develop a Black perspective in political science to push the boundaries of knowledge and to use that scholarship to ameliorate the adverse conditions confronting Black people in the United States and around the globe. This paper utilizes historical documents, speeches, interviews, and other scholarly works to detail the lasting contributions of the founders and Black political scientists to the discipline, paying particular attention to their scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and civic engagement. It finds that while political science is much improved as a result of their efforts, there is still work to do if their goals are to be achieved.

Lending to the Borrower from Hell

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Drelichman ◽  
Hans-Joachim Voth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Risk Sharing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Loan Contracts ◽  
The Right ◽  
Intelligent Model ◽  
New Evidence

Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. This book looks at one famous case—the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, the book analyzes the lessons from this historical example. Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, the book examines the incentives and returns of lenders. It provides powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults—they thrive. It also demonstrates that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The book unearths unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times. A fascinating story of finance and empire, this book offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults.

Latino Catholicism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Matovina
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
The United States ◽  
Societal Impact ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The U.S

Most histories of Catholicism in the United States focus on the experience of Euro-American Catholics, whose views on social issues have dominated public debates. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Latino Catholic experience in America from the sixteenth century to today, and offers the most in-depth examination to date of the important ways the U.S. Catholic Church, its evolving Latino majority, and American culture are mutually transforming one another. This book highlights the vital contributions of Latinos to American religious and social life, demonstrating in particular how their engagement with the U.S. cultural milieu is the most significant factor behind their ecclesial and societal impact.

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