The Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Author(s):  
Michael Hicks

A first-of-its-kind history, this book tells the epic story of how an all-volunteer group founded by persecuted religious outcasts grew into a multimedia powerhouse synonymous with the mainstream and with Mormonism itself. Drawing on decades of work observing and researching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the book examines the personalities, decisions, and controversies that shaped “America's choir.” Here is the miraculous story behind the Tabernacle's world-famous acoustics, the anti-Mormonism that greeted early tours, the clashes with Church leaders over repertoire and presentation, the radio-driven boom in popularity, the competing visions of rival conductors, and the Choir's aspiration to be accepted within classical music even as Mormons sought acceptance within American culture at large. Everything from Billboard hits to TV appearances to White House performances paved the way for Mormonism's crossover triumph. Yet, as the book shows, such success raised fundamental concerns regarding the Choir's mission, functions, and image.

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
Julie Golia

From early periodicals to conduct books, advice in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was largely a one-way transmission from advice giver to receiver. It also served conservative ends, reinforcing traditional gender roles to wide audiences, and soothing male anxieties about cultural change. But transformations in media and in American culture at the end of the nineteenth century paved the way for a new and strikingly modern paradigm of advice—one that was interactive, public, flexible in topic and form, and woman-centered. This chapter offers an overview of the rise of the advice column and frames its genesis in the context of the changing newspaper and advertising industries.


2019 ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Jana Riess

This chapter details the evolving views on homosexuality within Latter-day Saints. For most younger Mormons now who are gay, acceptance is slightly more likely than it was even in the recent past. Their decision to make their sexual identity public has been aided by a more widespread acceptance of homosexuality—not only in American culture more generally, but also within the Mormon subculture. Indeed, Mormon views on homosexuality have undergone a rapid change just within the last decade. Although acceptance among Mormons has not reached majority status, it is double what it was in 2007. This movement is driven in large part by millennials; more than half of Mormon millennials say homosexuality should be accepted. By contrast, only 38 percent of the combined Boomer/Silent Generation feels homosexuality should be accepted by society—a view that is reinforced by many statements from LDS Church leaders, who are themselves of the Silent Generation or even older.


Dearest Lenny ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 36-41
Author(s):  
Mari Yoshihara

Leonard Bernstein conducting the inaugural concert of the Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1962 symbolized the national and international status he had achieved. Through his close relationship with the Kennedy family and his continued ties to the White House, combined with his unrivaled place in the world of the performing arts, Bernstein was a prime candidate to lead the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. To manage the ever expanding scope of his work, Bernstein’s company, Amberson Enterprises, professionalized and corporatized its operations under Schuyler Chapin. But the popular leaning of the recording industry was beginning to cause some issues even for the foremost leader of American classical music.


2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. Van der Walt

Problems with the Bible in reformed theology: reflections from a Christian philosophical perspective The motivation for undertaking this investigation is the present tension in the reformed theology and in the reformed churches in South Africa. In spite of the fact that the reformed tradition confesses the authority of the Bible, theologians and church leaders are at the moment divided on how to view and interpret the Scriptures. They disagree about the message of God’s Word in the case of topical issues, for instance whether women should be allowed in ecclesiastical offices or on what the Bible has to say about homosexuality. The author is of the opinion that these tensions in the same church are caused, not only by different methods of interpreting the Bible but, at a much deeper level, also by the way in which one views the Bible according to different worldviews. In trying to resolve these problems and the resulting conflict of opinion, a Christian philosophical approach will be taken instead of the current theological efforts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Richard T. Wang ◽  
Patrick D. Tucker

We investigate the influence of partisanship on congressional communication by analyzing 180,000 press releases issued by members of Congress (MCs) between 2005 and 2019. Specifically, we examine whether partisan factors such as party control of the White House and/or Congress influence the tone used by MCs and whether MCs are more likely to focus on issues that their respective party owns. Our analyses include the use of multiple OLS models, the machine learning approach gradient boosting, and Grimmer’s topical modeling software “expAgenda.” We find that (1) partisanship influences the tone MCs use when communicating online; and (2) MCs are unable to prioritize discussing issues that their respective party own but devote slightly greater attention to their party’s issues than MCs from the opposite party. Our study ultimately finds strong evidence of partisan influence in the way MCs design their press releases and has important implications for online congressional communication.


1998 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 64-73

The debate over the role of the IMF and the way it is fulfilling its task is a wholly legitimate debate. We need to be held accountable, we need our mission to be understood—all these things are understandable. This is part of the process in any democratic country.


2014 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 151-182
Author(s):  
Murray Smith

A few years ago I gave a paper on the aesthetics of ‘noise,’ that is, on the ways in which non-musical sounds can be given aesthetic shape and structure, and thereby form the basis of significant aesthetic experience. Along the way I made reference to Arnold Schoenberg's musical theory, in particular his notion ofKlangfarbenmelodie, literally ‘sound colour melody,’ or musical form based on timbre or tonal colour rather than on melody, harmony or rhythm. Schoenberg articulated his ideas aboutKlangfarbenmelodiein the final section of hisHarmonielehre(1911). ‘Pitch is nothing else but tone colour measured in one direction,’ wrote Schoenberg. ‘Now, if it is possible to create patterns out of tone colours that are differentiated according to pitch, patterns we call ‘melodies’…then it must also be possible to make such progressions out of the tone colours of the other dimension, out of that which we simply call “tone colour.”’ In other words, traditional melodies work by abstracting and structuring the dominant pitch characterizing a musical sound, while ‘sound colour melodies’ work, Schoenberg argues, by structuring the combined set of pitches contained in a given musical sound (the overtones as well as the dominant pitch). Schoenberg is emphatic that, although a neglected and underdeveloped possibility within Western classical music, ‘sound colour melody’ is a perfectly legitimate and viable form of musical expression; indeed for Schoenberg it is a musical form with enormous potential.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Ethnersson Pontara

During the last decades, scholars have paid increasing attention to how cinema deals with traditional aesthetic values in its representation of opera. This research shows that contemporary cinema both manifests and challenges conceptions of opera anchored in romantic-modernist ideals. Recent film, however, also reveals an intriguing complexity surrounding conceptions of opera through the way in which it reflects promotion strategies of the classical music industry. This article draws attention to promotions of singers and opera music found in recent cinema that contribute to juxtapositions of different conceptions of opera. By letting operatic performances have a particular impact on fictional listeners and their ensuing actions, films associate opera with ideals belonging to a romantic-modernist discourse. However, they let this impact emanate from a way of performing opera that stands in contradiction to these same ideals. Discussing some central scenes from three recent films, I argue that the films’ displays of singers and opera music in this way remodels romantic-modernist discourses.


Author(s):  
Shiva Zaheri Birgani ◽  
Maryam Jafari

This paper attempts to investigate significations of the tropes of whiteness and blackness in white American culture in Baraka`s play, The Dutchman. . Gramsci is concerned with how one views man in history. His point is that men determine history rather than the reverse and this history is determined by the way in which men produce their means of subsistence. Man therefore is a social and “material” entity since. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.   Man’s ability to produce, the means of production, and the product produced, therefore, are central to man’s ability to be self-determined, to be real rather than an abstraction, a concept. It is in man’s reality, a reification brought about by the conscious act of production that he establishes his humanity. Marx’s humanism, therefore, is social in that man produces for more than himself; it is material in the “mode of production.” By material is not meant “psychic motivation” towards material goods. Based on the Gramsci hegemony, the black man has no history, he must create it; more importantly, since, according to Baraka, “Negro Literature” can never emerge from black consciousness unless it separates itself from the pre-established conditions, the literature must create and define itself in the process of becoming.


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