scholarly journals The Gender Stereotyping of Musical Instruments in the Western Tradition

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Steblin

The sexual stereotyping of musical instruments in Italian, German, and English society from the beginning of the Renaissance period to the end of the nineteenth century is the object of this essay. Through evidence gleaned from iconography and a variety of written documents, the author demonstrates how the gender association of musical instruments virtually eliminated female participation from important musical activities, ensuring the male domination of the art and preventing women from becoming prominent composers.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Johnson

The late nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth century saw the drum kit emerge as an assemblage of musical instruments that was central to much new music of the time and especially to the rise of jazz. This article is a study of Chinese drums in the making of the drum kit. The notions of localization and exoticism are applied as conceptual tools for interpreting the place of Chinese drums in the early drum kit. Why were distinctly Chinese drums used in the early drum kit? How did the Chinese drums shape the future of the drum kit? The drum kit has been at the heart of most popular music throughout the twentieth century to the present day, and, as such, this article will be beneficial to educators, practitioners and scholars of popular music education.


Elements ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Nista

For a slave living under the system of chattel slavery in the American South during the nineteenth century, avenues of self-expression were extremely limited. One of the few ways slaves could exert control over their own lives was through singing and dancing. These arts gave slaves a chance to relieve stress and establish a culture through the creation of musical instruments, songs, and dances. All of these contained hints at the true nature of slaves’ feelings towards the system that oppressed them, feelings that they had to frequently repress. However, despite slaves’ efforts to make this culture entirely their own, masters tried to find ways to use it to their advantage instead of to the slaves’ benefit. The resulting covert power struggle sometimes ended in favor of the masters, taking the form of regulations on slaves’ dances, requirement of the performance of songs and dances for the masters’ entertainment, and even abuse of slaves by using their own arts. Ultimately, however, slaves emerged victorious because of the hidden messages in their songs and dances. Though this method of coping could not erase all the masters did, it was at least one glimmer of hope.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
Marina Tarlinskaja

The aim of this essay is to demonstrate how the rhythmical evolution of English dramatic iambic pentameter parallelled the changes of aesthetic tastes and social values of English society from the mid-sixteenth to mid-nineteenth century. During 250 years the evolution of such features as the abundance or absence of enjambments, the use of constrained or loose iambs, and some others corresponds to the changes in the architecture of the theaters, the social structure of the audience, the manners of declamation, the complexity of poetic language, and the types of characters and plots the playwrights used.


2004 ◽  
Vol 129 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jann Pasler

Throughout the nineteenth century, musical instruments were seen as embodiments of a country's distinction, useful in ‘the study of man, the diverse races, and their degree of civilization’. This article, focusing on the illustrated French press between 1870 and 1900, examines popular colonial representations of instruments in the context of the complex racial ideologies and the material as well as ideological struggles underlying imperialism. Images of exotic instruments, I argue, served not only to teach about foreign cultures, but also to shape French perceptions of Africa and Indo-China during imperialist expansion there. As such, they help us to situate ethnomusicology's prehistory within French colonialism.


2002 ◽  
Vol 712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark T. Wypyski

ABSTRACTEnamels from European Renaissance enameled gold jewelry and other objects dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Renaissance style and other objects from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were quantitatively analyzed using energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry. Differences were observed in the overall compositions, as well as the colorants and opacifiers used, of the Renaissance period and most of the later enamels. Some enamels from as late as the early nineteenth century, however, appeared to be essentially the same as those used during the Renaissance. The differences found in the enamel compositions can provide a set of objective compositional criteria to help distinguish between authentic Renaissance period enameled objects and some later enamels done in the style of the Renaissance.


1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 289-319
Author(s):  
Judith F. Champ

The Chant or music used by the Papal choir, and indeed in most Catholic cathedrals and abbey churches is, excepting in some instances, ancient. Gregory the Great collected it into a body and gave it the form in which it now appears, though not the author of it. The chant of the psalms is simple and affecting, composed of Lydian, Phrygian and other Greek and Roman tunes, without many notes, but with a sufficient inflection to render them soft and plaintive or bold and animating…. This ancient music which has long been known by the name of the Gregorian chant, so well adapted to the gravity of divine service, has been much disfigured in the process of time by the bad taste of the middle and the false refinements of the latter ages. The first encumbered it with an endless succession of dull unnecessary notes, dragging their slow length along, and burthening the ear with a dead weight of sound; the other infected it with the melting airs, the laboured execution, the effeminate graces of the orchestra, useless to say the least even in the theatre, but profane and almost sacrilegious in the church. Some care seems to have been taken to avoid these defects in the papal choir. The general style and spirit of the ancient and primitive music have been retained and some modern compositions of known and acknowledged merit, introduced on stated days and in certain circumstances. Of musical instruments, the organ only is additional in St Peters, or rather in the Papal chapel, and even then not always: voices only are employed in general, and as those voices are numerous, perfect in their kind, and in thorough unison with one another, and as the singers themselves are concealed from view, the effect is enchanting and brings to mind ‘the celestial voices in full harmonic number joined’ that sometimes reached the ears of our first parents in paradise, and ‘lifted their thoughts to heaven’.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (29) ◽  
pp. 181-204
Author(s):  
PAULA GUERRA

Neste artigo procuraremos analisar os motivos para a invisibilidade feminina no rockportuguêscomo aspeto central da construção da feminilidade da contemporaneidade portuguesa. Noutro lugar demonstramos a existência de uma consistente dominação masculina no rockportuguês. Parece que as mulheres apenas são recordadas pela lente dos estereótipos dominantes, ou como meras namoradas, acompanhantes e atores sociais submissos em espaço público. Para combater esse esquecimento propomos, primeiro, um estado da arte que cruze género e estudos juvenis, depois uma curta apresentação do estado da participação feminina no rock português, para depois nos centrarmos na questão central do artigo: a história de vida de Xana, vocalista dos RádioMacau. Uma trajetória paradigmática não só de uma músicaportuguesa, mas de toda a construção da feminilidade no mundo das artes e da cultura na história recente de Portugal. Palavras-chave: Portugal.Rock.Dominação Masculina. Género. Xana. Rádio Macau. A PLACE WITH NO PLACE... IN PORTUGUESE ROCK Abstract: In this article we analyze the reasons for female invisibility in Portuguese rock as a central aspect in the construction of the femininity of the Portuguesecontemporaneity. Elsewhere we showed the existence of a consistent male domination in Portuguese rockscene.It seems that the women are barely remembered through the dominant stereotypeslenses, such as mere lovers, companions and submissive social actressesin public space. To combat this invisibility, we propose, first, a state of the art about gender and youth studies, then a brief presentation of the state of female participation in Portuguese rock, and then the central issue of the article: the life historyof Xana, vocalist of Radio Macau.A paradigmatic trajectory not only of Portuguese music, but of the entire construction of femininity in the world of arts and culture in recent Portuguese history. Keywords: Portugal. Rock. Male Domination. Gender. Xana. Radio Macau. UN LUGAR SIN LUGAR ... EN EL ROCK PORTUGUÉS Resumen: En este artículo analizaremos las razones de la invisibilidad femenina en el punk portugués. En otras partes4demostramos la existencia de una profunda misoginia en las letras punk portuguesas.Parece que las mujeres solo son recordadasa través de la lente de los estereotipos dominantes, o como meras novias, chaperonas y actores sociales sumisos en el espacio público. Para combatir este olvido, proponemos, primero, un estado del arte que cruza los estudios de género y juventud, luego una breve presentación del estado de la participación femenina en el rockportugués, y luego nos centramos en el tema central del artículo: la historia de vida de Xana, la vocalista de Rádio Macau.Una trayectoria paradigmática no solo de la música portuguesa, sino de toda la construcción de la feminidad en el mundo de las artes y la cultura en la historia portuguesa reciente.Palabras clave: Portugal. Rock. Dominación Masculina.Gender.Xana.Rádio Macau.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Zotova

This thesis is based on a photographic collection of Indian painted photographs from the South Asian Photographic collection at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). There are fifty-four photographic objects created by various makers and photographers with dates ranging from the 1880's to the 1990's. For the most part the objects are examples of studio portraiture. Most of them are photographic images with applied colour, however, there are some examples of paintings in this group that were executed in the tradition of photographic studio portraiture, but have no evidence of a photosensitive material underneath. The paintings, as well as the painted photographs, employ different media, such as watercolour, gouache and oil paints. The objects I investigated and catalogued fall under three categories: prints made by contact printing, by enlargement, and finally paintings produced using a photograph as a model. Tinting of photographs was a well-known Western tradition in the nineteenth century, while the process that Indian artists developed was a synthesis of their long practiced tradition of miniature painting and the newly developed technology of photography. Finally this thesis unveils the means of production of Indian painted photographs, and tries to find the reason for Indian artists employing opaque medium in their colourings.


2019 ◽  
pp. 67-76
Author(s):  
T. Kyrpyta

In this article, we aim to examine how English writers of the second half of the nineteenth century attempted to answer the question of the identity of their representative, the way they saw human nature, and the nature of good and evil in a person, in what they saw the integrity of personality, from which the ideals were repelled in search of a hero of his time. Using cultural, historical, and comparative methods, we contrasted the momentous events that influenced nineteenth-century English society with such a literary phenomenon as the revival of interest in the techniques characteristic of the Gothic novel, in particular, characters' doubles, the split personality, expressed through physicality. We have considered the reasons why the idea of the dualism of human nature became relevant in this era. The political, economic and social shifts in the life of England in the second half of the nineteenth century caused the writers to rethink their own identities as representative of nation and humanity. Scientific discoveries, above all, the work of Darwin, forced a new look at the nature of man, his inner world. As a projection of Darwinism as well as the search for self-determination of the colonized peoples, there is a fear of degradation, which is reflected in the appearance of animal characters (the monkey-like ghost in Le Fanu's novel Green Tea, Hyde in the novel by R. L. Stevenson "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"). The literary hero of the late nineteenth century is a multifaceted combination of archetypal images such as Prometheus, Satan, Pygmalion, and the embodiment of the idea of the dualism of human soul, in which the divine and animal principles are combined. Such a split personality is also associated with the destruction of the image of the good patriarch as the embodiment of the English nation. Keywords: Victorian literature, double, duality, rebel hero, identity, Prometheus myth, English "Gothic" tradition.


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