scholarly journals Lyric and Landscape in Rimsky-Korsakov's Songs

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-238
Author(s):  
Philip Ross Bullock

Observing the use of landscape as a category of reception, whether in nineteenth-century debates about artistic realism or Soviet-era criticism, this article examines the uses of landscape in several songs by Rimsky-Korsakov and replaces a persistent emphasis in criticism on questions of representation with a focus on how music generates a sense of subjectivity. Three approaches facilitate a more subtle and variegated understanding of Rimsky-Korsakov's “soundscapes” than has been proposed so far. First, landscape is interpreted as a facet of Russian national identity in the second half of the nineteenth century. Second, the evocation of the sounds of the natural world is seen as a metapoetic commentary on the creative act, providing an “internal” commentary on landscape to match the “external” one of the nation. Intertwined with these two themes is a series of parallels between music, literature, and the visual arts, which together show that Rimsky-Korsakov's songs are indicative of a tension between dynamism and stasis that is characteristic of musical representation of landscapes, and that has often been seen as characteristic of Russian music more generally.

Author(s):  
Laura Shelton

During the nineteenth century, romanticism became central to how Mexicans engaged in practices of self-definition. Romanticism in Mexico was an intellectual and artistic movement that was at once autonomous and connected to transcultural influences. As evidenced by the works of historians and literary scholars, as well as novelists, politicians, poets, and antiquarians from the period, romanticism was gendered in terms of women’s participation and representation, and in themes such as love, family, virtue, domesticity, and eroticism. Women were critical to the transmission of romanticism in quotidian practices of attending theater and opera, hosting salons, and instilling appreciation for poetry and the natural world in their families and their communities. Romanticism also exercised a profound influence on how Mexicans thought about ethnicity, race, and nationalism. In their quest for a unique national identity, Mexican intellectuals looked to the indigenous past and celebrated mestizaje as the foundation of Mexico’s cultural patrimony, even as they persisted in exclusionary practices toward their indigenous and casta compatriots. Romanticism offers a fruitful area to reevaluate well-studied themes of Mexican history, particularly its complex relationship with nationalism, modernization, gender, and the politics of ethnicity and race.


1987 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jadviga M. Da Costa Nunes

During the first half of the nineteenth century many Americans began to promote the visual arts as a means of defining and fostering national identity. One highly significant consequence of this new aesthetic was the rise of a native genre art which depicted uniquely “American” customs and characters. Focussing upon and interpreting the daily world of average citizens in an emphatically optimistic and ideal manner, these works of art celebrated the virtue, vigor, simplicity, resourcefulness and republicanism of American society. They tended chiefly to represent rural American activities – maple sugaring, quilting frolics, scenes of harvest and the like – and to rely upon a standard cast of characters – the farmer, the housewife, the peddler, the trapper, for example – each of whom exemplified a particular trait or traits that seemed distinctly “American.”


Author(s):  
James J. Coleman

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry


2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corina Caduff ◽  
Sabina Gebhardt Fink ◽  
Florian Keller ◽  
Steffen Schmidt

Intermedialität wird hier systematisch an Musik, Literatur, visuelle Kunst und Film dargestellt. Den Anfang machen allgemeine Überlegungen zu Materialität und Medium in diesen verschiedenen Künsten. Im Weiteren werden unter dem Aspekt ›Bimedialität‹ verschiedene Beispiele vorgestellt, die jeweils aus zwei Medien bestehen (z.B. Musikfilm, das Lied oder Schriftbilder). Dabei folgen wir der Frage, ob und wie jeweils eines der beiden Medien eine Vorrangstellung bekommt. Der abschließende Teil behandelt „intermediale Bezüge in Monomedialität“. Hier geht es um monomediale Darstellungen, denen aber eine Beschäftigung mit einem anderen Medium vorangegangen ist. Das ist etwa dann der Fall, wenn ein Schriftsteller über ein Bild schreibt, ohne daß dieses (im Text) zu sehen ist. In this article, we offer a systematic description of intermedia relations across music, literature, the visual arts, and film. Beginning with some general reflections on materiality and medium in these diverse fields of art, we then offer various examples consisting of two media (e.g. music film, song, images in writing). We pursue the question if, and how, one of the two media may take priority over the other. In our conclusion, we deal with „intermedia relations in monomediality“. This section focuses on artistic representations made in one medium, but based on reflections on another medium. For instance, this is the case when a novelist writes about a picture without having this picture reprinted in the text.


Author(s):  
Johanne Sloan

This chapter addresses the contemporary renewal of landscape art in Canada, arising at the intersection of visual art and cinema. Artworks, installations, and experimental films are discussed according to four categories: figure/ground, spatial illusions, the historicity of landscape, and digital scenery. Landscape—as a distinct art historical genre, conventional cinematic background, and ideological ground—has historically played a key role in Canadian visual culture. The contemporary artists and filmmakers in question have remade landscape in pictorial terms by remixing legacies from the visual arts and cinema and also in political terms, by calling attention to the damaged natural world of the Anthropocene, confronting Indigenous claims to the land, and foregrounding struggles over nationhood, identity, and collective memory.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 475
Author(s):  
Francisco Javier Ramón Solans

The objective of this article is to analyse Mexican national pilgrimages to Rome that took place during the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878–1903). These pilgrimages occurred in the context of a global Catholic mobilisation in support of the papacy, during the so-called Roman Question. This paper’s analysis of these pilgrimages draws from historiography about national pilgrimages, as well as studies on Catholic mobilisation in support of the pope in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is fundamentally based on primary sources of an official nature, such as reports and other printed documents produced on the occasion of the pilgrimage. The study’s primary conclusion is that national pilgrimages to Rome had a polysemic character since they brought together various religious and national identities. The pilgrimages contributed simultaneously to reinforcing the link between Catholicism and Mexican national identity and the global dimension of Catholicism and allegiance to the Holy See.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-202
Author(s):  
Duncan Reid

AbstractIn response to the contemporary ecological movement, ecological perspectives have become a significant theme in the theology of creation. This paper asks whether antecedents to this growing significance might predate the concerns of our times and be discernible within the diverse interests of nineteenth-century Anglican thinking. The means used here to examine this possibility is a close reading of B. F. Westcott's ‘Gospel of Creation’. This will be contextualized in two directions: first with reference to the understanding of the natural world in nineteenth-century English popular thought, and secondly with reference to the approach taken to the doctrine of creation by three late twentieth-century Anglican writers, two concerned with the relationship between science and theology in general, and a third concerned more specifically with ecology.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-628
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Smart

Giacomo Leopardi was convinced that the willingness of Italians to wallow passively in operatic spectacle was an important reason for Italy's lack of a civil society based on debate and the exchange of opinions. Despite recent proposals that opera and opera going constituted signiªcant means of social engagement and contributed to regional and/or national identity, the preoccupations of early nineteenth-century music journalism suggest that opera existed outside the mainstream of both political and aesthetic debate, and was not yet the subject of a truly vibrant national discourse.


With its five thematic sections covering genres from cantorial to classical to klezmer, this pioneering multi-disciplinary volume presents rich coverage of the work of musicians of Jewish origin in the Polish lands. It opens with the musical consequences of developments in Jewish religious practice: the spread of hasidism in the eighteenth century meant that popular melodies replaced traditional cantorial music, while the greater acculturation of Jews in the nineteenth century brought with it synagogue choirs. Jewish involvement in popular culture included performances for the wider public, Yiddish songs and the Yiddish theatre, and contributions of many different sorts in the interwar years. Chapters on the classical music scene cover Jewish musical institutions, organizations, and education; individual composers and musicians; and a consideration of music and Jewish national identity. One section is devoted to the Holocaust as reflected in Jewish music, and the final section deals with the afterlife of Jewish musical creativity in Poland, particularly the resurgence of interest in klezmer music. The chapters do not attempt to define what may well be undefinable—what “Jewish music” is. Rather, they provide an original and much-needed exploration of the activities and creativity of “musicians of the Jewish faith.“


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