\"Beethoven; Art and Protest in the 1800s\" Please respond to one (1) of the fol
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Question
"Beethoven; Art and Protest in the 1800s" Please respond to one (1) of the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response: Listen to one (1) composition (i.e., for a symphony) by Beethoven, a transitional figure between classical and romantic music. Identify the composition that you listened to, and determine whether you would characterize the chosen composition as either the Classical or Romantic style of music. Explain the key features that lead you to your conclusion. Identify one (1) modern musician who you believe was great at one type of music yet pioneered another. Select one (1) example of a literary work or a work of visual art from the 1800s—either Romantic or Realist in style—that responds in some way to the Industrial Revolution. Identify the work and the artist or writer, describe its features and style, and explain the manner in which it responds to the Industrial Revolution. Identify one (1) specific literary or artistic work of our day that effectively protests a social injustice. Explore: Beethoven Chapter 27 (pp. 907-914), Beethoven, qualities of the Romantic style in music (classical style was on pp. 826-832); review Week 4 “Music Folder” The Beethoven-Haus Website at http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php?template=portal_en (Note: Click on Digital Archives > Works by Ludwig von Beethoven; then find one [1] of his symphonies and listen to a clip.) Beethoven's Eroica at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XL2ha18i5w and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RFG5rGVL1s Art Reacting to the Industrial Revolution Chapter 28 ( 920-944), art and literature in Industrial Revolution The Museum of Fine Art in Ghent, Belgium (MSK Gent) – Romantic and Realist Art of the 1800s at http://www.mskgent.be/en/collection/1820-romanticism-and-realism/romanticism-and-realism New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art – French Realist Art of the 1800s at http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rlsm/hd_rlsm.htm
Explanation / Answer
I have to name two pieces as my all-time favourite Beethoven compositions. The first is the Eroica Symphony. Musically the most important symphony he ever wrote, anyone ever wrote, ever. The other piece is the second of his final set of three Piano Sonatas, no name, just Opus 110. The Piano Sonata is the only ‘genre’ Beethoven ever composed in without significant break throughout his life. Because the piano was his voice, and in all his piano sonatas he gives us his autobiography. Opus 110 is all about deafness, and how he overcame it. it is classic style.
Ray Charles was a pioneer of soul music, integrating R&B, gospel, pop and country to creat hits like "Unchain My Heart," "Hit the Road Jack" and "Georgia on My Mind." A blind genius, he is considered one of the greatest artists of all time.
The rapid industrial growth that began in Great Britain during the middle of the eighteenth century and extended into the United States for the next 150 years provided a wide range of material for many nineteenth-century writers. The literature of the Industrial Revolution includes essays, fiction, and poetry that respond to the enormous growth of technology as well as the labor and demographic changes it fostered. The Industrial Revolution figured prominently across a broad range of literary genres. While social critics such as Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and Henry Adams examined the cultural changes that accompanied the machine, novelists ranging from Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell to Rebecca Harding Davis and Herman Melville provided a realistic treatment of modern working conditions. Meanwhile, poets such as William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman contemplated the artist's role in such a world.
During the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution in England, the literati, for the most part, supported the new discoveries of science, often promoting their application in literary reviews. By the close of the eighteenth century, however, the early romantics began to view the emerging technology in a different light. In his Letters upon the Aesthetical Education of Man (1795), Friedrich Schiller argued that the machine was a threat to individual freedom and a destructive force on contemporary culture. Likewise, William Wordsworth, in his Preface to the Second Edition of "Lyrical Ballads" (1800), asserted that the rise of technology blunted the mind "to a state of almost savage torpor." Carlyle's influential essay, "Signs of the Times" (1829), in which he decried the encroachment of "mechanical genius" into the "internal and spiritual" aspects of life, continued the critique of industrialism and set the stage for the social-problem novels of the mid-nineteenth century. Charles Dickens's realistic and ironic depictions of industrial towns in Hard Times (1854), for example, underscored the deleterious affects of urbanization on the working class. Works by Benjamin Disraeli, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontë sisters, and W. M. Thackeray also presented accurate accounts of the industrialism of Victorian society.
The transfer of new technologies across the Atlantic also shaped the development of literature in the United States. As in England, many of the initial responses welcomed the new technology, finding it indispensable to the economic growth of the fledgling nation. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, writing near the close of the eighteenth century, believed that the machine would blend harmoniously into the open countryside of the American Republic rather than produce the overcrowded and polluted cities of Europe. Critic Leo Marx contended that, with the exception of apologists for the Southern slavery system, there was little effective opposition to the forces of urbanization and industrialism. The abundance of land and scarcity of labor had intensified the demand for machinery, and by the time Carlyle's essay reached America, the economy was expanding at such a phenomenal rate that his attack on the machine was not widely accepted by the American populace. Writers such as Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, for the most part, embraced the new technology, finding in the railroad a vehicle for uniting the country and furthering democratic ideals. However, such a response was not universally shared. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain, among others, provided alternative perspectives, often critiquing the materialistic value systems that accompanied industrialism through the metaphors, themes, and details of their works.
The issues surrounding the relationship between technology and culture have continued to interest critics and writers well into the twentieth century. Not only have scholars concentrated on the canonical works by major authors of the period, but they have increasingly focused their attention on contemporary reactions found in magazines, newspapers, and popular novels in an effort to better understand the culture of the period. Contemporary writers also look to literary figures of the Industrial Revolution as they address similar concerns of the role of the machine in society.
Protest art is a broad term that refers to creative works that concern or are produced by activists and social movements and are often used as part of demonstrations or acts of civil disobedience. There are also contemporary and historical works and currents of thought that can be characterized in this way. Social movements produce such works as the signs, banners, posters and other printed materials used to convey a particular cause or message. These works tend to be ephemeral, characterized by their portability and disposability and are frequently not authored or owned by any one person. While some protest art is associated with trained and professional artists, an extensive knowledge of art is not required to take part in protest art. Protest artists frequently bypass the art world institutions and commercial gallery system in an attempt to reach a wider audience. Furthermore, protest art is not limited to one region or country, but is rather a method that is used around the world.T.S.Eliot had realized way back in the 1920's, what was essentially a protest about the awareness of the decadence of our civilization - “The London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down.” Rabindranath Tagore had created a world of fantasy in and through art hence.
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