scholarly journals Racial Dynamics: The Casting of Lucian Msamati as Salieri in the National Theatre’s 2016 Production of Amadeus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Curtin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Demographic Representation ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
First Time

This article examines the casting of Lucian Msamati as Antonio Salieri in the 2016 production of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus by the National Theatre in London. This was the first time an actor of colour had played the role of Salieri in a professional production of Shaffer’s drama. How did the casting affect interpretation of the play? And what was its cultural significance in the context of current debates about demographic representation in classical music and efforts to diversify the art form and its practitioners? In order to answer these questions this article examines statements made by the production team, theories of casting, and documented responses to Msamati in this role, including professional reviews and comments made online. The article reveals a complicated picture with regard to the efficacy of this casting choice, highlighting limitations and missed opportunities for deeper engagement with the history and politics of race in classical music whilst acknowledging the positive aspects of the casting and its potential for beneficial social impact. In doing so, this article demonstrates the importance of thinking across different types of representation in both cultural production and analysis: specifically, demographic representation in classical music (i.e., whom it represents and who is missing or under-represented in its practices) and the artistic representation of classical music, specifically, in this case, in theatre.

scholarly journals Orchestral Theatre and the Concert as a Performance Laboratory

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (04) ◽  
pp. 291-311
Author(s):  
Adrian Curtin
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Musical Score ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Tom Stoppard ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Andre Previn ◽  
The University

In the past decade the National Theatre has presented two restagings of earlier productions, now featuring an onstage orchestra (the Southbank Sinfonia) that has been choreographed and made a key part of the spectacle: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, by Tom Stoppard, with a musical score by André Previn, performed in 2009 and 2010, and Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, performed in 2016 and 2018. Contemporaneously, a vanguard of British orchestras has begun to explore how concerts can be presented in ways that are more theatrically sophisticated than the standard concert format. Here Adrian Curtin investigates ‘orchestral theatre’ as an aesthetic proposition by examining the collaborations between the Southbank Sinfonia and the National Theatre, and their legacy in a series of experimental concerts staged by the Southbank Sinfonia entitled #ConcertLab. He aims to identify the artistic and cultural significance of these collaborations and #ConcertLab so as to better understand contemporary efforts to present orchestras (and, more broadly, classical music) in a theatrically innovative manner. Adrian Curtin is a senior lecturer in the Drama Department at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Avant-Garde Theatre Sound: Staging Sonic Modernity (Palgrave, 2014) and Death in Modern Theatre: Stages of Mortality (Manchester University Press, 2019), and principal investigator of the AHRC research network ‘Representing “Classical Music” in the Twenty-First Century’.

Apartheid Aesthetics and Insignificant Art

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Stephanus Muller
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
South African ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Small House ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Selection Of

Stephanus Le Roux Marais (1896−1979) lived in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, for nearly a quarter of a century. He taught music at the local secondary school, composed most of his extended output of Afrikaans art songs, and painted a number of small landscapes in the garden of his small house, nestled in the bend of the Sunday’s River. Marais’s music earned him a position of cultural significance in the decades of Afrikaner dominance of South Africa. His best-known songs (“Heimwee,” “Kom dans, Klaradyn,” and “Oktobermaand”) earned him the local appellation of “the Afrikaans Schubert” and were famously sung all over the world by the soprano Mimi Coertse. The role his ouevre played in the construction of a so-called European culture in Africa is uncontested. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the rich evocations of landscape encountered in Marais’s work. Contextualized by a selection of Marais’s paintings, this article glosses the index of landscape in this body of cultural production. The prevalence of landscape in Marais’s work and the range of its expression contribute novel perspectives to understanding colonial constructions of the twentieth-century South African landscape. Like the vast, empty, and ancient landscape of the Karoo, where Marais lived during the last decades of his life, his music assumes specificity not through efforts to prioritize individual expression, but through the distinct absence of such efforts. Listening for landscape in Marais’s songs, one encounters the embrace of generic musical conventions as a condition for the construction of a particular national identity. Colonial white landscape, Marais’s work seems to suggest, is deprived of a compelling musical aesthetic by its very embrace and desired possession of that landscape.

Changing Theorizations of Cultural Production in Canada and Quebec: A Review of Some Recent Literature on the Cultural IndustriesLA SOCIETE DE L’INFORMATION: DU FORDISME AU GATESISME. Gaetan Tremblay. Montreal: Southam Conference, Canadian Communication Association/GRICIS.UQAM, 1995.L’ETAT DE CULTURE: GENEALOGIE DISCURSIVE DES POLITIQUES CULTURELLES QUEBECOISES. Martin AUor and Michelle Gagnon Montreal: GRECC/Concordia University, 1994.MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: THE STORY OF CANADA’S BROADCASTING POLICY. Marc Raboy. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990.THE MEDIUM AND THE MUSE: CULTURE, TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY. Charles Sirois and Claude E. Forget. Montreal: The Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1995.HOLLYWOOD’S OVERSEAS CAMPAIGN: THE NORTH ATLANTIC MOVIE TRADE, 1920-1950. Ian Jarvie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.A CANADIAN JOURNEY: CONVERSATIONS WITH TIME. Peter Harcourt,Toronto 1994: Oberon Press.CANADA’S HOLLYWOOD: THE CANADIAN STATE AND FEATURE FILMS. Ted Madger, Toronto 1993: University of Toronto Press.

1997 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 178-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dorland
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
The North ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Concordia University ◽  
The North Atlantic

Class, Control, and Classical Music

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bull
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
The Aesthetic

Through an ethnographic study of young people playing and singing in classical music ensembles in the south of England, this book analyses why classical music in England is predominantly practiced by white middle-class people. It describes four ‘articulations’ or associations between the middle classes and classical music. Firstly, its repertoire requires formal modes of social organization that can be contrasted with the anti-pretentious, informal, dialogic modes of participation found in many forms of working-class culture. Secondly, its modes of embodiment reproduce classed values such as female respectability. Thirdly, an imaginative dimension of bourgeois selfhood can be read from classical music’s practices. Finally, its aesthetic of detail, precision, and ‘getting it right’ requires a long-term investment that is more possible, and makes more sense, for middle- and upper-class families. Through these arguments, the book reframes existing debates on gender and classical music participation in light of the classed gender identities that the study revealed. Overall, the book suggests that inequalities in cultural production can be understood through examining the practices that are used to create a particular aesthetic. It argues that the ideology of the ‘autonomy’ of classical music from social concerns needs to be examined in historical context as part of the classed legacy of classical music’s past. It describes how the aesthetic of classical music is a mechanism through which the middle classes carry out boundary-drawing around their protected spaces, and within these spaces, young people’s participation in classical music education cultivates a socially valued form of self-hood.

Stand-Up and Be Counted: Exploring The Role of Comedy in Society

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Robinson ◽  
Zoe Turner
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Significant Other ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Healthcare It ◽  
Perceived Price ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Sensitive Issues

Comedy is a multidimensional, diverse and versatile spectacle, an identifiable art form and source of entertainment and it has a rich historical identity and purpose. It contributes to cultural identities and has more recently been proven to provide positive impacts in mental healthcare. It offers social and cultural benefit and influences social change. The growth of live comedy has a strong background in working-class venues which has possibly predisposed it to being perceived as less significant other performance arts such as dance and theatre. Given the untapped potential for further research this empirical paper sought to evaluate the potential opportunities for comedy to make a greater positive impact on local communities. To facilitate this, data was collected through surveys administered online and in comedy clubs in the West Midlands (UK). A total of 179 questionnaires were received, supported with in-depth interviews with comedy club managers. Key issues for live comedy engagement were found to include a lack of awareness, perceived price barriers and a lack of publicity. 70% of respondents agreed that live comedy could have a wider, positive social impact and also offers a platform to address difficult social issues. A number of participants expressed the importance of communitas and the opportunity to discuss difficult and sensitive issues in a structureless state of liminality.

Postmoney theory: value function in the domain of postmoney

foresight ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 554-570
Author(s):  
Boyan Christov Ivantchev
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Value Function ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Strong Base ◽  
Content Type ◽  
A Value ◽  
First Time

Purpose The purpose of this study is to research the latest quantitative and qualitative transformations of money and its interaction with the market economy and societies in terms of their influence on the inner nature of money and its transformation from a simple tool to an aim per se, i.e. postmoney. Transforming the perception of the intrinsic value and “soul” of the money into the postmoney, influenced by the rising longevity and wide expectation for the ability to scientifically prolong the human life, will be discussed. This transformation will be confirmed by analysing the results from a national representative sociological survey (panel study with sample size n = 1,000). Design/methodology/approach The author uses the following philosophical methodological approaches – comparative-constructive, phenomenological, cognitive and deconstructive analysis. Findings The objective and qualitative reasons offered by the postmoney theory (PMT) for the transformation of money into postmoney, are related to the being of temporality, as well as to technologization and the sixth factor of production, scientific exponentiality and mental changes in the human being. A current postmoney survey gives a strong base to believe that the perception of an intrinsic value of postmoney changes the shape of a value function – from logarithmic to linear or even stochastic. This is the reason to believe that increasing of a postmoney quantity will lead to a qualitative transformation and psychological increase of postmoney sensitivity. Research limitations/implications The author intends to expand the postmoney survey on the international level so to confirm local findings. Practical implications Postmoney survey might be used as a powerful tool in creating and legalizing non-monistic money based on blockchain technologies and philosophical and socio-economic research of the postmoney issue. Social implications The future of money is of great importance for the exponentiality of the socio-economic environment and societies. Social impact of the money will be inevitably rising in the domain of postmoney perception. Originality/value The author of the current paper coined for the first-time notion of postmoney and now is expanding research developing PMT. As per the best knowledge of the author, shape of the curve of value function was not questioned and believes it might be of help to better understand the money phenomenon.

scholarly journals The hermit сharacter as a new type of character in realistic prose by Maxim Gorky

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (SPE2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetlana Strokina ◽  
Lenie Taymazova ◽  
Elvina Useinova ◽  
Ruslan Adonin
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Art Form ◽  
New Type ◽  
Maxim Gorky ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

1922-1924 was a fruitful period of Maxim Gorky's literature work. It is related to searching a new art form. The cycle “Stories of 1922-1924” is an expressive example of “new prose”. For the first time, the hermit character appeared in the cycle “Stories of 1922-1924”. From the point of view of generally recognized morality and the Church, the new type of character is ambiguous. It is characterized by both sinfulness and holiness.

scholarly journals SIMILAR CONCEPT OF DJINN FOUND IN NOVEL BARTIMAEUS: THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND AND IN OLD MALAY LITERATURE: THE TALE OF TAMIM AD-DARI

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 001-012
Author(s):  
Hendro Kuncoro
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Physical Description ◽  
Fantasy Fiction ◽  
Language Communication ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
First Time

Bartimaeus:The Amulet of Samarkand is a fantasy fiction novel written by Jonathan Stroud, a British author. In this novel Stroud portrayed the Djinn as an enslaved demon from the perspective of a Djinn character named Bartimaeus. This study was conduct to compare the concept of Djinn found in the novel with the concept of Djinn in Indonesian culture because while reading it for the very first time, the writer felt similarity between those conceptions. Meanwhile, the concept of Djinn in Indonesian culture was formed one of them by the arrival of Islam which had an influence on the development of literature in Indonesia. Among them is the Hikayat/Tale of Tamim Ad-Dari. The conception of the Djinn that can be revealed from the comparison of these two literatures are in the form of aspects of the life of the Djinn, its physical description, its abilities, its diversity, its interaction with humans, and creatures related to the Djinn. A comparative literature is what this study concerns. By comparing two things we will comprehend the contents of these two things. This research is qualitative and descriptive. Literature is not only covers the story, but also express the culture and thought of the author that conveyed through the work he has made. Meanwhile culture is a beliefs, system of language, communication, and practices that share in a certain group of peoples which they use to define their identity. Therefore, it can be said that comparative literature facilitate the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of literature. And so, this study emphasis on the analysis of social and cultural production within the cultural differences. Hopefully, this study will have pedagogical benefits from the point of view of two cultures presented, which underlines social and cultural aspect of two cultures for student of literature and also for the further research in the field

scholarly journals Ivan Aleksandăr (1331-1371)

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Alberti
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
First Time

The long reign of Ivan Aleksandăr (1331-1371), the penultimate emperor of Bulgaria prior to the Turkish conquest, was marked by a series of successful military campaigns against Serbia and Byzantium and above all by an intensive cultural production, largely fostered and funded by the sovereign himself. The central decades of the fourteenth century were of crucial importance for the later cultural evolution of Bulgaria and the whole of Orthodox Slovenia, despite which to date ample and exhaustive studies on the figure of Ivan Aleksandăr are lacking. There is, in effect, a considerable amount of information at disposal, although it is scattered over the literary sources, the colophons of the manuscripts, the epigraphic documentation and also, obviously, the official deeds promulgated by the Emperor. Through the analysis of this varied documentation, this book attempts to reconstruct the figure of the sovereign, the context in which he lived and worked, his greatness and his mistakes and his parallel activities as a strategist and an illuminated patron of the arts. For the first time, the Italian reader can find collected and translated all the manuscript sources relating to the Bulgarian sovereign. The book is completed by an appendix with the original texts of the Slavonic-ecclesiastical tradition.

Fin de siècle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Martens
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Art Nouveau ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
First Time

Referring to the end of the 19th century, Fin de siècle not only represents a specific historical moment but also a part of the sensibility and of the cultural production of the period. It is particularly challenging to define fin de siècle within the artistic world, as it neither corresponds to a movement around a leading figure, nor to an amalgamation of shared and promulgated aesthetic principles (there is no manifesto laying claim to fin-de-sièclism). The term appears for the first time at the end of the 1880s. In its French form, it has imposed itself ever since on most Western-European languages (e.g., English, German). Fin de siècle crystalizes certain anxieties that are typical of this era: the period is characterized by a particular striving for modernity, while at the same time it is also perceived as an end. This explains why the fin de siècle mentality has often been closely related to decadence (or decadentism) to which it is, however, not limited: symbolism, aestheticism or even art nouveau all fall within fin de siècle. The fin de siècle mind-set is marked by an ensemble of shared features, in particular an ambivalent fear for the end.

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