Vanessa Agnew
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195336665
- eISBN:
- 9780199868544
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336665.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter analyzes debates about the meaning and power of music and the constitution of English culture in the latter part of the century. These debates pitted ideas about the power of music ...
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This chapter analyzes debates about the meaning and power of music and the constitution of English culture in the latter part of the century. These debates pitted ideas about the power of music against an anti-Orphic discourse that challenged what some writers saw as the hyperinflation of music's moral and social uses. The chapter centers on Burney's thwarted efforts to found a music conservatory and makes a detailed study of his opposition — in particular, John Bicknell's parody, Musical Travels thro' England, by Joel Collier, Organist (1774). In so doing, the chapter investigates the kind of cultural work performed by parody, burlesque, and other forms of symbolic inversion. It shows that rather than ushering in a new set of aesthetic values, anti-Orphic discourse used a triangulated argument in which figures like the castrato, the Polynesian, the traveler, and the music scholar were parodied. By burlesquing the outsider, composers and writers sidelined cosmopolitan, aristocratic musical culture in an effort to consolidate middle class forms of cultural production. This suggests that by the latter part of the century, Britons'fascination with foreignness was giving way to new anxieties as debates about music were folded into broader concerns about changing class relations, abolitionism, Jacobinism, and the loss of the American colonies.Less
This chapter analyzes debates about the meaning and power of music and the constitution of English culture in the latter part of the century. These debates pitted ideas about the power of music against an anti-Orphic discourse that challenged what some writers saw as the hyperinflation of music's moral and social uses. The chapter centers on Burney's thwarted efforts to found a music conservatory and makes a detailed study of his opposition — in particular, John Bicknell's parody, Musical Travels thro' England, by Joel Collier, Organist (1774). In so doing, the chapter investigates the kind of cultural work performed by parody, burlesque, and other forms of symbolic inversion. It shows that rather than ushering in a new set of aesthetic values, anti-Orphic discourse used a triangulated argument in which figures like the castrato, the Polynesian, the traveler, and the music scholar were parodied. By burlesquing the outsider, composers and writers sidelined cosmopolitan, aristocratic musical culture in an effort to consolidate middle class forms of cultural production. This suggests that by the latter part of the century, Britons'fascination with foreignness was giving way to new anxieties as debates about music were folded into broader concerns about changing class relations, abolitionism, Jacobinism, and the loss of the American colonies.
T. P. Wiseman
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198154754
- eISBN:
- 9780191715457
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198154754.003.0012
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Careful investigation of the contemporary evidence (mainly Cicero) suggests that mime was a major part of the theatrical repertory at the Roman games in the first century BC, and that mythological ...
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Careful investigation of the contemporary evidence (mainly Cicero) suggests that mime was a major part of the theatrical repertory at the Roman games in the first century BC, and that mythological burlesque was one of its regular themes. With this in mind, and building on the one piece of direct evidence (Fasti 4.326), it is possible to reconstruct hypothetical stage originals for various episodes in both the Fasti and the Metamorphoses.Less
Careful investigation of the contemporary evidence (mainly Cicero) suggests that mime was a major part of the theatrical repertory at the Roman games in the first century BC, and that mythological burlesque was one of its regular themes. With this in mind, and building on the one piece of direct evidence (Fasti 4.326), it is possible to reconstruct hypothetical stage originals for various episodes in both the Fasti and the Metamorphoses.
Erik N. Jensen
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195395648
- eISBN:
- 9780199866564
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395648.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, European Modern History
Boxing rings, whether in sports arenas or burlesque theaters, afforded men and women stages on which to create larger‐than‐life personas and to test the limits of socially acceptable ...
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Boxing rings, whether in sports arenas or burlesque theaters, afforded men and women stages on which to create larger‐than‐life personas and to test the limits of socially acceptable self‐presentation. Female boxers embraced the sport's physical combat as a strategy for getting ahead in a postwar Germany in which young women outnumbered the battle‐ravaged men in their age group and had increasingly to fend for themselves. Male boxers embraced the marketing potential of the sport by posing for early renditions of the male pin‐up photograph. Women often displayed themselves as “babes” in boxing trunks for the titillation of their public, but the men did, too. These boxers' carefully crafted public images popularized an ideal of working‐class toughness, the promise of upward mobility, and the allure of self‐invention in modern society.Less
Boxing rings, whether in sports arenas or burlesque theaters, afforded men and women stages on which to create larger‐than‐life personas and to test the limits of socially acceptable self‐presentation. Female boxers embraced the sport's physical combat as a strategy for getting ahead in a postwar Germany in which young women outnumbered the battle‐ravaged men in their age group and had increasingly to fend for themselves. Male boxers embraced the marketing potential of the sport by posing for early renditions of the male pin‐up photograph. Women often displayed themselves as “babes” in boxing trunks for the titillation of their public, but the men did, too. These boxers' carefully crafted public images popularized an ideal of working‐class toughness, the promise of upward mobility, and the allure of self‐invention in modern society.
Bruce Vermazen
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195372182
- eISBN:
- 9780199864140
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372182.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book is about the Six Brown Brothers, a musical act on the burlesque, vaudeville, minstrel, and Broadway stages (1911-33) that was once reputed to have initiated the “saxophone craze” of the ...
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This book is about the Six Brown Brothers, a musical act on the burlesque, vaudeville, minstrel, and Broadway stages (1911-33) that was once reputed to have initiated the “saxophone craze” of the 1910s and 1920s. Ontario-born circus musician Tom Brown (1881-1950), the group's leader, founded a saxophone quartet c.1906 within the Ringling Brothers' show that included two of his brothers, Verne (1887-1964) and Percy (1883-1918). By 1908, the quartet had become the Five Brown Brothers, also including brothers Alex (or Alec, 1882-1974) and Fred (1890-1949). Their brother William (1879-1945) joined later, as did many unrelated musicians. The act is placed in the context of the introduction of the saxophone into North American popular music. The early part of the saxophone craze is described and the act's role in it assessed. The shows in which they appeared are described. Tom's life is detailed, and those of the other brothers are sketched. A discography of their recordings for U-S Everlasting, Columbia, Victor, Emerson, and Vitaphone is incorporated, and the recordings are discussed.Less
This book is about the Six Brown Brothers, a musical act on the burlesque, vaudeville, minstrel, and Broadway stages (1911-33) that was once reputed to have initiated the “saxophone craze” of the 1910s and 1920s. Ontario-born circus musician Tom Brown (1881-1950), the group's leader, founded a saxophone quartet c.1906 within the Ringling Brothers' show that included two of his brothers, Verne (1887-1964) and Percy (1883-1918). By 1908, the quartet had become the Five Brown Brothers, also including brothers Alex (or Alec, 1882-1974) and Fred (1890-1949). Their brother William (1879-1945) joined later, as did many unrelated musicians. The act is placed in the context of the introduction of the saxophone into North American popular music. The early part of the saxophone craze is described and the act's role in it assessed. The shows in which they appeared are described. Tom's life is detailed, and those of the other brothers are sketched. A discography of their recordings for U-S Everlasting, Columbia, Victor, Emerson, and Vitaphone is incorporated, and the recordings are discussed.
Bruce Vermazen
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195372182
- eISBN:
- 9780199864140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372182.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
After a description of vaudeville c.1905, especially its organization into circuits and its division into big time and small time, this chapter traces the vaudeville career of the succession of ...
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After a description of vaudeville c.1905, especially its organization into circuits and its division into big time and small time, this chapter traces the vaudeville career of the succession of multi-instrumental musical acts involving Tom Brown and his brothers, from their earliest known tour (1905) until their flowering as the Six Brown Brothers in 1911. During the 1909-10 season, the Five Brown Brothers toured with a burlesque show called Broadway Gaiety Girls. During 1910-11, they toured the Orpheum circuit and played at the Folies Bergere nightclub in Manhattan.Less
After a description of vaudeville c.1905, especially its organization into circuits and its division into big time and small time, this chapter traces the vaudeville career of the succession of multi-instrumental musical acts involving Tom Brown and his brothers, from their earliest known tour (1905) until their flowering as the Six Brown Brothers in 1911. During the 1909-10 season, the Five Brown Brothers toured with a burlesque show called Broadway Gaiety Girls. During 1910-11, they toured the Orpheum circuit and played at the Folies Bergere nightclub in Manhattan.
Marilyn Butler
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129684
- eISBN:
- 9780191671838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129684.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Jane Austen's original satirical inspiration was fed by dislike for a literary manner, rather than for a moral idea. The juvenilia are, according to this view, ‘burlesques’: though definition and ...
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Jane Austen's original satirical inspiration was fed by dislike for a literary manner, rather than for a moral idea. The juvenilia are, according to this view, ‘burlesques’: though definition and re-definition tends to surround the word, since it is by no means easy to see what, precisely, is being burlesqued. Although Austen's sentimentalists act in a way that is at the very least equivocal, for in practice they appear ruthlessly self-interested, it is no part of her intention to suggest that they are insincere. In her view the contradiction is inherent in the creed: she wants to show that the realization of self, an apparently idealistic goal, is in fact necessarily destructive and delusory. Dialogue of this kind is developed in Northanger Abbey, and in far subtler forms in the later novels.Less
Jane Austen's original satirical inspiration was fed by dislike for a literary manner, rather than for a moral idea. The juvenilia are, according to this view, ‘burlesques’: though definition and re-definition tends to surround the word, since it is by no means easy to see what, precisely, is being burlesqued. Although Austen's sentimentalists act in a way that is at the very least equivocal, for in practice they appear ruthlessly self-interested, it is no part of her intention to suggest that they are insincere. In her view the contradiction is inherent in the creed: she wants to show that the realization of self, an apparently idealistic goal, is in fact necessarily destructive and delusory. Dialogue of this kind is developed in Northanger Abbey, and in far subtler forms in the later novels.
Philip Gould
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199967896
- eISBN:
- 9780199346073
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199967896.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature, American, 18th Century and Early American Literature
As Congress aimed to legitimize itself as the colonial political authority, it published numerous articles and declarations written in a dignified style of eighteenth-century state papers. Loyalists ...
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As Congress aimed to legitimize itself as the colonial political authority, it published numerous articles and declarations written in a dignified style of eighteenth-century state papers. Loyalists accordingly debunked that authority by lampooning and parodying Congressional expression. This chapter examines one important parody of the Articles of Association, published in Philadelphia in 1774, as a way of showing the transatlantic literary strategies employed to “lower” a political body they believed was unlawful. This chapter analyzes the distinctive cultural positions the ancient Chevy Chase ballad held on each side of the Atlantic by comparing Loyalist satire with British satire written in ballad form.Less
As Congress aimed to legitimize itself as the colonial political authority, it published numerous articles and declarations written in a dignified style of eighteenth-century state papers. Loyalists accordingly debunked that authority by lampooning and parodying Congressional expression. This chapter examines one important parody of the Articles of Association, published in Philadelphia in 1774, as a way of showing the transatlantic literary strategies employed to “lower” a political body they believed was unlawful. This chapter analyzes the distinctive cultural positions the ancient Chevy Chase ballad held on each side of the Atlantic by comparing Loyalist satire with British satire written in ballad form.
Marie-claude Canova-green
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635849
- eISBN:
- 9780748671120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635849.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Social History
In summer 1621, George Villiers, then Marquess of Buckingham, invited the king and an exclusive circle of courtiers to inaugurate his newly restored countryside residence Burley-on-the-Hill in ...
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In summer 1621, George Villiers, then Marquess of Buckingham, invited the king and an exclusive circle of courtiers to inaugurate his newly restored countryside residence Burley-on-the-Hill in Rutland, Lincolnshire. On this occasion, he commissioned Ben Jonson with a masque, The Gypsies Metamorphos’d, in which he himself and various friends performed as dancing, pick-pocketing and palm-reading gipsies. The Gypsies Metamorphos’d was a risqué piece which experimented with innovative features, some of them outrageous. In particular, Jonson and his collaborators drew upon French-style ballet and banqueting fashions which they combined with traditional English music and song. This essay explains the reason for these artistic choices.Less
In summer 1621, George Villiers, then Marquess of Buckingham, invited the king and an exclusive circle of courtiers to inaugurate his newly restored countryside residence Burley-on-the-Hill in Rutland, Lincolnshire. On this occasion, he commissioned Ben Jonson with a masque, The Gypsies Metamorphos’d, in which he himself and various friends performed as dancing, pick-pocketing and palm-reading gipsies. The Gypsies Metamorphos’d was a risqué piece which experimented with innovative features, some of them outrageous. In particular, Jonson and his collaborators drew upon French-style ballet and banqueting fashions which they combined with traditional English music and song. This essay explains the reason for these artistic choices.
Elaine Frantz Parsons
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625423
- eISBN:
- 9781469625447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625423.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Klan attacks took on distinct cultural forms. Ku-Klux borrowed their costume and violent performance not only from local culture, but also from popular cultural tropes in national circulation and ...
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Klan attacks took on distinct cultural forms. Ku-Klux borrowed their costume and violent performance not only from local culture, but also from popular cultural tropes in national circulation and heavily featured in minstrelsy, burlesque, circus, and carnivals. In deliberately mimicking these cultural forms, they put themselves in conversation with the northern, urban centers where so much of the naturally circulating popular culture was produced. Many of the images Ku-Klux borrowed were already weighted with a host of meanings about race, gender, and social order. Ku-Klux imported these meanings into their attacks, which they frequently used to reinforce racist cultural narratives: depicting black victims as comically overembodied and lacking in integrity. Klan victims responded not only to the violence of their attacks but also to the cultural meanings embedded in them. Depending on their circumstances and strategy, they could try to save themselves suffering by performing the minstrel roles they understood to be expected. Or they could refuse to inhabit those roles, and instead use the attack itself, and their later narration of it, to challenge the assumptions inherent in the popular cultural tropes the Ku-Klux were mobilizing.Less
Klan attacks took on distinct cultural forms. Ku-Klux borrowed their costume and violent performance not only from local culture, but also from popular cultural tropes in national circulation and heavily featured in minstrelsy, burlesque, circus, and carnivals. In deliberately mimicking these cultural forms, they put themselves in conversation with the northern, urban centers where so much of the naturally circulating popular culture was produced. Many of the images Ku-Klux borrowed were already weighted with a host of meanings about race, gender, and social order. Ku-Klux imported these meanings into their attacks, which they frequently used to reinforce racist cultural narratives: depicting black victims as comically overembodied and lacking in integrity. Klan victims responded not only to the violence of their attacks but also to the cultural meanings embedded in them. Depending on their circumstances and strategy, they could try to save themselves suffering by performing the minstrel roles they understood to be expected. Or they could refuse to inhabit those roles, and instead use the attack itself, and their later narration of it, to challenge the assumptions inherent in the popular cultural tropes the Ku-Klux were mobilizing.
Mark Franko
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199794010
- eISBN:
- 9780190241186
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794010.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, History, Western
This book presents a historical and theoretical examination of French baroque court ballet from approximately 1573 until 1670. Spanning the late Renaissance and the Baroque, this book brings ...
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This book presents a historical and theoretical examination of French baroque court ballet from approximately 1573 until 1670. Spanning the late Renaissance and the Baroque, this book brings aesthetic and ideological criteria to bear on court ballet libretti, period accounts, contemporaneous performance theory, and related commentary on dance and movement in literature. It studies the formal choreographic apparatus that characterizes late Valois and early Bourbon ballet spectacle and how its changing aesthetic ultimately reflected the political situation of the nobles who devised and performed court ballets. Court ballet included but was not solely limited to dancing: speaking and singing were also integral components of early ballets. The book gives particular attention to the technologies of theatrical choreography designed to accentuate, subsume, or countervene an omnipresent text. Thus, the relationship of dance to text, in both its historical and theoretical dimension, forms the main axis of the book’s inquiry.Less
This book presents a historical and theoretical examination of French baroque court ballet from approximately 1573 until 1670. Spanning the late Renaissance and the Baroque, this book brings aesthetic and ideological criteria to bear on court ballet libretti, period accounts, contemporaneous performance theory, and related commentary on dance and movement in literature. It studies the formal choreographic apparatus that characterizes late Valois and early Bourbon ballet spectacle and how its changing aesthetic ultimately reflected the political situation of the nobles who devised and performed court ballets. Court ballet included but was not solely limited to dancing: speaking and singing were also integral components of early ballets. The book gives particular attention to the technologies of theatrical choreography designed to accentuate, subsume, or countervene an omnipresent text. Thus, the relationship of dance to text, in both its historical and theoretical dimension, forms the main axis of the book’s inquiry.
