Anyone good w/ music history?

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AzhlackDMPiccolo
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Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by AzhlackDMPiccolo » Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:09 pm

So, I have this 15 page essay due at the end of the quarter and i'm super stuck and was wondering if anyone on this forum can help me out.
So my topic is how composers influence political leaders.
What musical piece should i choose for Wagner influencing Hitler.
And if there are any other composers that drastically influence another political leader and w/ what music.

Thank you!
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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by Hostrauser » Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:50 pm

AzhlackDMPiccolo wrote:So, I have this 15 page essay due at the end of the quarter and i'm super stuck and was wondering if anyone on this forum can help me out.
So my topic is how composers influence political leaders.
What musical piece should i choose for Wagner influencing Hitler.
And if there are any other composers that drastically influence another political leader and w/ what music.

Thank you!
Supposedly, during WWI Adolf Hitler fought in the trenches with part of the score to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in his knapsack. Richard Wagner was also admired by Hitler because Wagner was intensely anti-semitic (even going so far as to write a violently antisemitic booklet in the 1850s called "Das Judebthum in die Musik" insisting the Jews poisoned public taste in the arts).

From Wikipedia:
There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazi thinking. As with the works of Nietzsche, the Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda and ignored or suppressed the rest. For example Joseph Goebbels banned Parsifal in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, due to the perceived pacifistic overtones of the opera.[21] Although Hitler himself was obsessed by "the Master", many in the Nazi hierarchy were not, and, according to the historian Richard Carr, deeply resented the prospect of attending these lengthy epics at Hitler's insistence.

There's probably some interesting stuff to be uncovered about Shostakovich and Stalin, although in most cases it is the political leaders that influenced the arts, not the other way around.

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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by Jsaxm » Fri Jan 16, 2009 6:28 am

Hostrauser wrote:...although in most cases it is the political leaders that influenced the arts, not the other way around.
I agree with that statement 100%
You just can't encourage stupidity

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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by teacherken » Fri Jan 16, 2009 10:21 am

AzhlackDMPiccolo wrote:So, I have this 15 page essay due at the end of the quarter and i'm super stuck and was wondering if anyone on this forum can help me out.
So my topic is how composers influence political leaders.
What musical piece should i choose for Wagner influencing Hitler.
And if there are any other composers that drastically influence another political leader and w/ what music.

Thank you!

One could argue that the anti-war protest songs of the late 60s, early 70s had an influence on public opinion, and therefore politics.

Mozart's introduction of native language opera had a profound effect on music, and changed political views of Italian as THE language of opera.

The arguments re: obscenity in language in music and censorship have had major politcal ramifications.

Ken

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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by thunderdrmz » Fri Jan 16, 2009 3:47 pm

Hostrauser wrote:although in most cases it is the political leaders that influenced the arts, not the other way around.

While I have only briefly studied this I find it mind blowing that some of the highly significant composers of their era were composing music that they did not want to write
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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by The Aceman » Fri Jan 16, 2009 6:44 pm

thunderdrmz wrote:
Hostrauser wrote:although in most cases it is the political leaders that influenced the arts, not the other way around.

While I have only briefly studied this I find it mind blowing that some of the highly significant composers of their era were composing music that they did not want to write
Well I guess we can't all be like Howard Roark, huh.
Go read "Ishmael" a novel by Daniel Quinn. It will literally change your life.
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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by BD94Euph » Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:38 am

Before i studied music history, I totally thought composers sat and waited for GOD to inspire them to write a masterpiece. I was pretty let-down" to find that these guys woke up in the morning, had some coffee, and went to work. Writing little songs for the royal family visiting next week, a song for the opening of a concert hall, maybe a piece for church, then maybe something for lunch outdoors. I can seriously imagine Baroque and Classical (not so much) composers complaining about their jobs and their boss just like anyone else. Wierd. But hey, the emporer (if you're lucky) or your boss, namely the people who commission and pay your works, allow you to eat and pay bills. Of course, the goal would be to work enough to pay your bills, then write your masterpieces on your own time.

Some however were lucky enough to have nice supporters allowing them to write their own work and payng them for it. Just like us, paying us for our dream job!

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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by The Aceman » Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:06 pm

So no one got my Howard Roark reference huh....oh well. I guess it was kind of obscure.
Go read "Ishmael" a novel by Daniel Quinn. It will literally change your life.
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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by maxpowers » Mon Jan 26, 2009 1:07 pm

Not enough for a 15 page essay, but maybe an interesting sidebar...
From Wikipedia:

Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp minor, known as the "Farewell" Symphony (in German: Abschieds-Symphonie), was composed by Joseph Haydn in 1772. It was written for Haydn's patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, while he, Haydn and the court orchestra were at the Prince's summer palace in Eszterhaza. The stay there had been longer than expected, and most of the musicians had been forced to leave their wives back at home in Eisenstadt, so in the last movement of the symphony, Haydn subtly hinted to his patron that perhaps he might like to allow the musicians to return home: during the final adagio each musician stops playing, snuffs out the candle on his music stand, and leaves in turn, so that at the end, there are just two muted violins left (played by Haydn himself and the concertmaster, Alois Luigi Tomasini). Esterházy seems to have understood the message: the court returned to Eisenstadt the day following the performance.

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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by seanrj » Mon Jan 26, 2009 8:42 pm

I have a book for you...

Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music. Brown, Steven and Volgsten, Ulrik. 2006. Bergahn Books. (I know, not an APA citation. Sue me...)

Brown is a researcher in cognitive neuroscience at a university in Vancouver.

Here is a bit of the back cover notes...

"Since the beginning of human civilization, music has been used as a device to control social behavior, where it has operated as much to promote solidarity within groups and hostility between two competing groups. Music is an emotive manipulator that influences attitude, motivation, and behavior at many levels and in many contexts."

You may not be able to quote the book itself, but it could point you in the right direction for research that you can look up and quote directly.

This is a text for one of my DMA courses, and it is pretty neat.

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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by AzhlackDMPiccolo » Wed Jan 28, 2009 4:19 pm

seanrj wrote:I have a book for you...

Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music. Brown, Steven and Volgsten, Ulrik. 2006. Bergahn Books. (I know, not an APA citation. Sue me...)

Brown is a researcher in cognitive neuroscience at a university in Vancouver.

Here is a bit of the back cover notes...

"Since the beginning of human civilization, music has been used as a device to control social behavior, where it has operated as much to promote solidarity within groups and hostility between two competing groups. Music is an emotive manipulator that influences attitude, motivation, and behavior at many levels and in many contexts."

You may not be able to quote the book itself, but it could point you in the right direction for research that you can look up and quote directly.

This is a text for one of my DMA courses, and it is pretty neat.
thankkk you! sounds like something that will be really useful. I wondering if you had like a quick summary of it before i start reading the some of it.
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Pi=3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105...

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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by AzhlackDMPiccolo » Sat Feb 07, 2009 9:19 pm

So does anyone want to give their opinion about the Hitler-Wagner connection? I'm going to use people's opinions in the essay.
Eyes with pride!

"Ability may get you to the top but it takes character to keep you there."
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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by Chapagne » Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:12 pm

I'm going to use people's opinions in the essay.
Are you going to list your sources? Your professor probably won't think WOP is an appropriate academic source. Or you could just pass off other's ideas as your own, but it's called plagiarism.

Take any ideas you find here you want to use and research them.
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Re: Anyone good w/ music history?

Post by AzhlackDMPiccolo » Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:38 pm

Well i told her about this and she saidi can use it as "public opinion" obviously i'm going to have to quote. It's kind of an informal paper.
Eyes with pride!

"Ability may get you to the top but it takes character to keep you there."
-John Wooden

Pi=3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105...

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