Instrumental Works of the Middle Period

William Byrd ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 243-274
Author(s):  
Mark Ferraguto

Between early 1806 and early 1807, Ludwig van Beethoven completed a remarkable series of instrumental works including his Fourth Piano Concerto (Op. 58), “Razumovsky” String Quartets (Op. 59), Fourth Symphony (Op. 60), Violin Concerto (Op. 61), Thirty-Two Variations on an Original Theme for Piano (WoO 80), and Overture to Collin’s Coriolan (Op. 62). Critics have struggled to reconcile the music of this year with Beethoven’s so-called heroic style, the paradigm through which his middle-period works have typically been understood. Drawing on theories of mediation and a wealth of primary sources, Beethoven 1806 explores the specific contexts in which the music of this year was conceived, composed, and heard. Not only did Beethoven depend on patrons, performers, publishers, critics, and audiences to earn a living, but he also tailored his compositions to suit particular sensibilities, proclivities, and technologies.


Author(s):  
Konrad Hirschler

This chapter deals with how the Islamic historical writing of the Middle Period developed directly from the early Islamic tradition, and its legacy remained deeply inscribed into the ways history was written and represented between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. However, as historians started to develop new styles and new genres, they turned to previously neglected aspects of the past, their social profile changed, and the writing of history became a more self-conscious, and to some degree self-confident, cultural practice. Most importantly, those issues that had motivated earlier historians, such as the legitimacy of the Abbasid Caliphate, declined in significance and historians of the Middle Period turned to new and more diverse subjects.


Author(s):  
Christopher Bobonich

The dialogues that are most obviously important for Plato’s political philosophy include: the Apology, the Crito, the Gorgias, the Laws, the Republic, and the Statesman. Further, there are many questions of political philosophy that Plato discusses in his dialogues. These topics include, among others: (1) the ultimate ends of the city’s laws and institutions; (2) who should rule, the forms of constitution, and their ranking; (3) what institutions and offices there should be; (4) the nature and extent of citizens’ obligation to obey the laws; (5) the proper criterion of citizenship; (6) the political and social status of women; (7) the purposes of punishment; (8) private property; and (9) slavery. This chapter attempts to provide an overall picture of Plato’s political philosophy, focusing on three moments: the “Socratic” dialogues, including the Apology and the Crito; the great middle-period work, the Republic, along with the Phaedo; and finally, two works from Plato’s last period, the Statesman and the Laws.


CLA Journal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-398
Author(s):  
Michael Hill ◽  
Jessica Welburn Paige ◽  
Deborah Whaley
Keyword(s):  

2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumkum Chatterjee

This article studies the importance of scribal skills in sustaining political regimes and the function of scribal careers in shaping and creating social and ritual status with particular reference to Bengal from the thirteenth till the eighteenth centuries. Based on histories of landed families, middle period Bengali literature and the large genealogical corpus (kulagranthas) of this region, the article surveys the social geography of literate–scribal communities and their long association with a number of Indo–Islamic regimes which ruled over Bengal during these centuries. The article explores the social and cultural implications of scribal careers as well as the educational and linguistic proficiencies which undergirded them. Finally, the article notes the role played by polities in regulating jati hierarchies and boundaries and comments on its implications for the period studied here as also for the colonial/modern period.


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