Americanism Musically: Nation, Evolution, and Public Education at the Columbian Exposition, 1893

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiri Miller

The Columbian Exposition (the World's Fair in Chicago, 1893) was intended to represent the entire progress of human history, with American civilization as its culminating triumph. The Exposition celebrated the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World; it restaged that discovery in myriad ways: from the display of ““savage races”” on the Midway to the construction of an emergent American middle class as civilization's newest noble savages, hungry for education. Music was an integral part of the Exposition. America's musical elite took an active role in the fair's promotion and design. The Exposition also stimulated a flood of writing on the nature and future of ““truly American”” music. This article examines American musical culture at the Exposition, with attention to music as art, science, and commerce three categories at the heart of the Exposition's formal definition of music. The network of mutual reinforcements, contradictions and the related concepts of nation, race, and evolution has powerful implications for the ensuing history of music in America. Analysis of the educational agenda of music at the Exposition suggests it taught its visitors--5 to 10 percent of the American population--a great deal about race, class, nationhood, and their identity as consumers. Reading the musical criticism, speculative philosophy, and patriotic grandstanding that accompanied the fair shows how musical thought of the day relied on evolutionary theory.

1996 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey G. McCafferty

AbstractChronology is a fundamental prerequisite for problem-oriented, anthropologically relevant archaeology. It is also the shaky foundation that has hampered attempts to reconstruct the culture history of Cholula, Mexico. Cholula is among the oldest continuously occupied urban centers of the New World, yet it remains one of the most enigmatic. This paper evaluates previous cultural sequences for the site, and summarizes recent evidence to construct a chronology using absolute dates and ceramic assemblages from primary depositional contexts. This revised sequence features a clearer understanding of Middle Formative settlement and the definition of ritual and domestic contexts from the Classic period. In addition, there is now evidence for a gradual transition between Late Classic and Early Postclassic material culture; and for the evolution of the Postclassic polychrome tradition within a sequence of short, clearly defined phases.


Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder

This chapter focuses on Harry T. Burleigh's participation in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, as representative of African American music. The exposition was designed to celebrate four centuries of progress toward building a lively industrial nation, which Chicago seemed to symbolize. It drew Americans from across the country, in company with Europeans, royals as well as commoners, to see whether the Americans might very literally be able to outshine the Paris Exposition of 1889. Despite resistance by the fair commission, there was some official representation of African Americans. This chapter examines how the World's Fair gave Burleigh, together with Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells, the opportunity to address issues of representation and the ambiguous role that music and public performance could play in confronting discrimination and racist stereotyping.


Author(s):  
Pablo Palomino

This introductory chapter describes the contribution of the book to key historiographic and intellectual approaches to music and Latin American history. It locates historically and conceptually the emergence of the category of Latin American music within the history of the idea of Latin America since the nineteenth century. It focuses on the emergence of a cultural definition of Latin America as a region and argues about the centrality of music in it. It is a conversation with many intellectual, political, and aesthetic histories of the region. It describes the main concepts utilized in the book—musical practices, transnationalism, modernity—and the overall content of each chapter.


Author(s):  
Didier Debaise

In his reading of Descartes, Whitehead extracts a definition of the subject as a relation through which feelings are unified and appropriated. The key point of disagreement is found in the inverse relations that each constructs between the subject and feeling. If Whitehead does in fact take up the problem’s terms, he is nevertheless radically opposed to the Cartesian economy organised around a subject qua foundation of feeling. Whitehead’s reading could be criticised, of course: he takes a Cartesian proposition, pushes it in the direction of speculative philosophy, only to return, finally, to Descartes’ own internal coherence, opposing it to an entirely different economy of thought. This, however, would be to lose what is important in Whitehead’s reading of Descartes. Whitehead is not doing history of philosophy. The relevance of each of his critiques and reprises could, of course, be justly attacked in so far as they are constructed on grounds that would have been completely foreign to the original thinkers.


Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder

This chapter focuses on Harry T. Burleigh's involvement in the creation of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World.” After attending the Chicago World's Fair and visiting Erie, Burleigh returned to New York City in late September 1893 to continue his studies at the National Conservatory of Music. He was joined this time by his friend Will Marion Cook, who was impressed by Jeannette Thurber's genuinely inclusive approach in recruiting students. The two men relished opportunities to enjoy the abundance of fine music the city had to offer, pondering how African American music should find its place in such settings. Burleigh continued to spend evenings with the Dvořák family through the fall. This chapter also considers the controversy stirred by Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in E Minor and his advocacy of an American school of music based on Negro music.


Author(s):  
Sergey Vasil'ev ◽  
Vyacheslav Schedrin ◽  
Aleksandra Slabunova ◽  
Vladimir Slabunov

The aim of the research is a retrospective analysis of the history and stages of development of digital land reclamation in Russia, the definition of «Digital land reclamation» and trends in its further development. In the framework of the retrospective analysis the main stages of melioration formation are determined. To achieve the maximum effect of the «digital reclamation» requires full cooperation of practical experience and scientific potential accumulated throughout the history of the reclamation complex, and the latest achievements of science and technology, which is currently possible only through the full digitalization of reclamation activities. The introduction of «digital reclamation» will achieve greater potential and effect in the modernization of the reclamation industry in the «hightech industry», through the use of innovative developments and optimal management decisions.


Author(s):  
Didier Debaise

Process and Reality ends with a warning: ‘[t]he chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence’ (PR, 337). Although this danger of narrowness might emerge from the ‘idiosyncrasies and timidities of particular authors, of particular social groups, of particular schools of thought, of particular epochs in the history of civilization’ (PR, 337), we should not be mistaken: it occurs within philosophy, in its activity, its method. And the fact that this issue arises at the end of Process and Reality reveals the ambition that has accompanied its composition: Whitehead has resisted this danger through the form and ambition of his speculative construction. The temptation of a narrowness in selection attempts to expel speculative philosophy at the same time as it haunts each part of its system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-343
Author(s):  
Fabio Camilletti

It is generally assumed that The Vampyre was published against John Polidori's will. This article brings evidence to support that he played, in fact, an active role in the publication of his tale, perhaps as a response to Frankenstein. In particular, by making use of the tools of textual criticism, it demonstrates how the ‘Extract of a Letter from Geneva’ accompanying The Vampyre in The New Monthly Magazine and in volume editions could not be written without having access to Polidori's Diary. Furthermore, it hypothesizes that the composition of The Vampyre, traditionally located in Geneva in the course of summer 1816, can be postdated to 1818, opening up new possibilities for reading the tale in the context of the relationship between Polidori, Byron, and the Shelleys.


Moreana ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (Number 164) (4) ◽  
pp. 157-186
Author(s):  
James M. McCutcheon

America’s appeal to Utopian visionaries is best illustrated by the Oneida Community, and by Etienne Cabet’s experiment (Moreana 31/215 f and 43/71 f). A Messianic spirit was a determinant in the Puritans’ crossing the Atlantic. The Edenic appeal of the vast lands in a New World to migrants in a crowded Europe is obvious. This article documents the ambition of urbanists to preserve that rural quality after the mushrooming of towns: the largest proved exemplary in bringing the country into the city. New York’s Central Park was emulated by the open spaces on the grounds of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. The garden-cities surrounding London also provided inspiration, as did the avenues by which Georges Haussmann made Paris into a tourist mecca, and Pierre L’Enfant’s designs for the nation’s capital. The author concentrates on two growing cities of the twentieth century, Los Angeles and Honolulu. His detailed analysis shows politicians often slow to implement the bold and costly plans of designers whose ambition was to use the new technology in order to vie with the splendor of the natural sites and create the “City Beautiful.” Some titles in the bibliography show the hopes of those dreamers to have been tempered by fears of “supersize” or similar drawbacks.


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