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Music At Dumbarton Oaks
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Book Synopsis A Home of the Humanities by : James N. Carder
Download or read book A Home of the Humanities written by James N. Carder and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss were consummate collectors and patrons. The illustrated essays in this volume reveal how the Blisses' wide-ranging interests in art, music, gardens, architecture, and interior design resulted in the creation of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection--what they came to call their "home of the humanities."
Book Synopsis Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks by : Karl A. Taube
Download or read book Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks written by Karl A. Taube and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 2004 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks presents the Olmec portion of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. It illustrates all thirty-nine Olmec art objects in color plates and includes many complementary and comparative black-and-white illustrations and drawings. The body of Pre-Columbian art that Robert Bliss carefully assembled over a half-century between 1912 and 1963, amplified only slightly since his death, is a remarkably significant collection. In addition to their aesthetic quality and artistic significance, the objects hold much information regarding the social worlds and religious and symbolic views of the people who made and used them before the arrival of Europeans in the New World. This volume is the second in a series of catalogues that will treat objects in the Bliss Pre-Columbian Collection. The majority of the Olmec objects in the collection are made of jade, the most precious material for the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica from early times through the sixteenth century. Various items such as masks, statuettes, jewelry, and replicas of weapons and tools were used for ceremonial purposes and served as offerings. Karl Taube brings his expertise on the lifeways and beliefs of ancient Mesoamerican peoples to his study of the Olmec objects in teh Bliss collection. His understanding of jade covers a broad range of knowledge from chemical compositions to geological sources to craft technology to the symbolic power of the green stone. Throughout the book the author emphasizes the role of jade as a powerful symbol of water, fertility, and particularly, of the maize plant which was the fundamental source of life and sustenance for the Olmec. The shiny green of the stone was analogous to the green growth of maize. This fundamental concept was elaborated in specific religious beliefs, many of which were continued and elaborated by later Mesoamerican peoples, such as the Maya. Karl Taube employs his substantial knowledge of Pre-Columbian cultures to explore and explicate Olmec symbolism in this catalogue.
Book Synopsis Byzantine Garden Culture by : Antony Robert Littlewood
Download or read book Byzantine Garden Culture written by Antony Robert Littlewood and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 2002 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individual essays discuss Byzantine conceptions of paradise, the textual evidence for monastic horticulture, animal and game parks, herbs in medicinal pharmacy, and the famous illustrated copy of Dioskorides's herbal manual in Vienna. An opening chapter explores questions and observations from the point of view of a non-Byzantine garden historian, and the closing chapter suggests possible directions for future scholarship in the field.
Book Synopsis Perspectives on Garden Histories by : Michel Conan
Download or read book Perspectives on Garden Histories written by Michel Conan and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 1999 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprising ten papers which critically examine the field of garden history, presented at the twenty-first Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture. Topics include changes in approaches to garden history and architectural studies over time and new historical investigations and discoveries in Italian and Mughal gardens. Good
Book Synopsis Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks by : Dumbarton Oaks
Download or read book Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks written by Dumbarton Oaks and published by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to Maya art is based on study of one of the most important collections in the United States, assembled by Robert Woods Bliss between 1935 and 1962. The catalogue, written by leading Maya scholars, contains detailed analyses of specific works of art along with thematic essays situating them within the context of Maya culture.
Download or read book Music as Biology written by Dale Purves and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The universality of musical tones has long fascinated philosophers, scientists, musicians, and ordinary listeners. Why do human beings worldwide find some tone combinations consonant and others dissonant? Why do we make music using only a small number of scales out of the billions that are possible? Why do differently organized scales elicit different emotions? Why are there so few notes in scales? In Music as Biology, Dale Purves argues that biology offers answers to these and other questions on which conventional music theory is silent. When people and animals vocalize, they generate tonal sounds—periodic pressure changes at the ear which, when combined, can be heard as melodies and harmonies. Human beings have evolved a sense of tonality, Purves explains, because of the behavioral advantages that arise from recognizing and attending to human voices. The result is subjective responses to tone combinations that are best understood in terms of their contribution to biological success over evolutionary and individual history. Purves summarizes evidence that the intervals defining Western and other scales are those with the greatest collective similarity to the human voice; that major and minor scales are heard as happy or sad because they mimic the subdued and excited speech of these emotional states; and that the character of a culture’s speech influences the tonal palette of its traditional music. Rethinking music theory in biological terms offers a new approach to centuries-long debates about the organization and impact of music.
Book Synopsis Byzantine Lead Seals by : Nicolas Oikonomidès
Download or read book Byzantine Lead Seals written by Nicolas Oikonomidès and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 1985 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Flowers, Butterflies and Insects by : Maria Sibylla Merian
Download or read book Flowers, Butterflies and Insects written by Maria Sibylla Merian and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-01-23 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fine-line images of roses, butterflies, tulips, caterpillars, and other specimens of plant and insect life in elegant full-page compositions. These plates are considered among the finest achievements of a great age of floral painting and the engraver's art. Reprinted from the classic, influential works of the famed artist/entomologist Merian (1647–1717). New English captions.
Book Synopsis Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, 3: Leo III to Nicephorus III, 717-1081 by : Philip Grierson
Download or read book Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, 3: Leo III to Nicephorus III, 717-1081 written by Philip Grierson and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 1973 with total page 992 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In volume three of this series, Part I covers the period between Leo III to Michale III (867-1081), while Part II covers Bail I to Nicephorus III (867-1081).
Download or read book Selling Sounds written by David Suisman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-31 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, David Suisman’s Selling Sounds explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture. Around the turn of the twentieth century, music entrepreneurs laid the foundation for today’s vast industry, with new products, technologies, and commercial strategies to incorporate music into the daily rhythm of modern life. Popular songs filled the air with a new kind of musical pleasure, phonographs brought opera into the parlor, and celebrity performers like Enrico Caruso captivated the imagination of consumers from coast to coast. Selling Sounds uncovers the origins of the culture industry in music and chronicles how music ignited an auditory explosion that penetrated all aspects of society. It maps the growth of the music business across the social landscape—in homes, theaters, department stores, schools—and analyzes the effect of this development on everything from copyright law to the sensory environment. While music came to resemble other consumer goods, its distinct properties as sound ensured that its commercial growth and social impact would remain unique. Today, the music that surrounds us—from iPods to ring tones to Muzak—accompanies us everywhere from airports to grocery stores. The roots of this modern culture lie in the business of popular song, player-pianos, and phonographs of a century ago. Provocative, original, and lucidly written, Selling Sounds reveals the commercial architecture of America’s musical life.
Book Synopsis Beatrix Farrand's Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks by : Diane K. McGuire
Download or read book Beatrix Farrand's Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks written by Diane K. McGuire and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 1980 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks was prepared as a resource for those charged with maintenance of the gardens following their acquisition by Harvard University in 1941. Beatrix Farrand here explains the reasoning behind her plan for each of the gardens and stipulates how each should be cared for in order that its basic character remain intact. Her resourceful suggestions for alternative plantings, her rigorous strictures concerning pruning and replacement, her exposition of the overall concept that underlies each detail, and the plant lists that accompany her discussion of each garden make this a volume of interest to every student, practitioner, and lover of landscape design.
Book Synopsis The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking by : Charles Rosen
Download or read book The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking written by Charles Rosen and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant, practical, and humorous conversations with one of the twentieth-century’s greatest musicologists on art, culture, and the physical pain of playing a difficult passage until one attains its rewards. Throughout his life, Charles Rosen combined formidable intelligence with immense skill as a concert pianist. He began studying at Juilliard at age seven and went on to inspire a generation of scholars to combine history, aesthetics, and score analysis in what became known as “new musicology.” The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking presents a master class for music lovers. In interviews originally conducted and published in French, Rosen’s friend Catherine Temerson asks carefully crafted questions to elicit his insights on the evolution of music—not to mention painting, theater, science, and modernism. Rosen touches on the usefulness of aesthetic reflection, the pleasure of overcoming stage fright, and the drama of conquering a technically difficult passage. He tells vivid stories about composers from Chopin and Wagner to Stravinsky and Elliott Carter. In Temerson’s questions and Rosen’s responses arise conundrums both practical and metaphysical. Is it possible to understand a work without analyzing it? Does music exist if it isn’t played? Throughout, Rosen returns to the theme of sensuality, arguing that if one does not possess a physical craving to play an instrument, then one should choose another pursuit. Rosen takes readers to the heart of the musical matter. “Music is a way of instructing the soul, making it more sensitive,” he says, “but it is useful only insofar as it is pleasurable. This pleasure is manifest to anyone who experiences music as an inexorable need of body and mind.”
Book Synopsis Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador by : Colin McEwan
Download or read book Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador written by Colin McEwan and published by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection. This book was released on 2021 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach presents current research on the prehispanic indigenous peoples in the lands between Mesoamerica and the Andes. Specialists have contributed to this illustrated book on topics ranging from historical and theoretical perspectives to reports on recent excavations.
Book Synopsis Witness to History: 1929-1969 by : Charles E. Bohlen
Download or read book Witness to History: 1929-1969 written by Charles E. Bohlen and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “At the end of the 1920’s the Foreign Service of the United States... introduced a program of regional specialization. It was a fortunate innovation, for, among other things, it provided the Service with a group of well‐trained Russian‐language specialists just at the time when the United States was beginning its new and troubled association with the Soviet Union. One of the first of these was Charles E. Bohlen, and for the next 40 years he was to be involved in every major development in Soviet American relations, serving under William C. Bullitt in the Moscow embassy in 1934, acting as interpreter and adviser at the wartime conferences at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, succeeding George F. Kennan as Ambassador to Moscow in 1953, and, in later years, advising Presidents about Russian attitudes at the time of the Cuban missile crisis and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Diplomatic memoirs are generally thin stuff and often mere exercises in self‐inflation. This cannot be said of this absorbing account. Anyone who reads it will understand what George Kennan meant when he described his friend as ‘a man interested... both passionately and dispassionately in everything that concerned the Russian scene.’ It is clear that, from that bright snowy day when he jumped down on the station platform at Negoreloye in March, 1934, until the very end of his career, his hunger to learn all he could about Russia and its rulers was unabated; but it is also apparent that he always strove to remain objective about what he learned and to remember that his role was not to pass judgment on the behavior of the Soviet Government but to understand it and to use that understanding for the good of his country. His memoirs are the record of how he accomplished this... the account of the various phases of the author’s career is rich in circumstantial detail and in anecdote. Particularly effective are Mr. Bohlen’s descriptions of the men he met during his career. These include a shrewd assessment of de Gaulle, whom Bohlen saw frequently during his term as Ambassador to France from 1962 until 1968, and a series of impressions of the Secretaries of State under whom he served. Among these he admired Marshall most and Dulles, who unceremoniously exiled him to Manila in 1957, least.” — Gordon A. Craig, The New York Times “A fascinating account of a most extraordinary career.” — W. Averell Harriman “No single person was present at more of the high-level diplomatic encounters of the wartime and immediate post-war periods than Charles Bohlen. And none was better equipped to judge them. His memoirs have, therefore, unique historical value and should go far to answer the questions of those who are now challenging the soundness of American decisions in that time.” — George F. Kennan “This book is original, reflective, well written, full of new aperçus for the journalist and fresh fuel for the historian... an admirable book.” — The Economist “Few diplomats covered as much ground, fewer have written so compelling a book... [a] solid, worthy book.” — Times Literary Supplement “Absorbing throughout... There is much that is amusing, for Bohlen has a bump of irreverence, and much that is new... A definite contribution to history.” — Joseph P. Lash “The book... is of major historical importance... for its perception and the light which it sheds on the statesmen and the major crises of our time.” — Edward Weeks, The Atlantic Monthly “[Bohlen was] one of the leading diplomats of his time but also an outstanding connoisseur of Russian history and culture... an important book.” — Adam B. Ulam, Slavic Review “[An] extraordinary book... a dynamic narrative... for anyone... interested in the ups and downs of American-Soviet policies, this should prove a most useful book.” — Stephen D. Kertesz, The Review of Politics “[An] important book... I found these memoirs both fascinating and enlightening.” — F. H. Soward, International Journal
Book Synopsis Satchmo Blows Up the World by : Penny VON ESCHEN
Download or read book Satchmo Blows Up the World written by Penny VON ESCHEN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the U.S. State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism. Penny Von Eschen escorts us across the globe, backstage and onstage, as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other jazz luminaries spread their music and their ideas further than the State Department anticipated. Both in concert and after hours, through political statements and romantic liaisons, these musicians broke through the government's official narrative and gave their audiences an unprecedented vision of the black American experience. In the process, new collaborations developed between Americans and the formerly colonized peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East--collaborations that fostered greater racial pride and solidarity. Though intended as a color-blind promotion of democracy, this unique Cold War strategy unintentionally demonstrated the essential role of African Americans in U.S. national culture. Through the tales of these tours, Von Eschen captures the fascinating interplay between the efforts of the State Department and the progressive agendas of the artists themselves, as all struggled to redefine a more inclusive and integrated American nation on the world stage.
Book Synopsis Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: Anastasius I to Maurice, 491-602 by : Dumbarton Oaks
Download or read book Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: Anastasius I to Maurice, 491-602 written by Dumbarton Oaks and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 1966 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume in the catalogue covers the coins of Anastasius I through Maurice, and includes a history of the collections.
Book Synopsis Contemplating Music by : Joseph Kerman
Download or read book Contemplating Music written by Joseph Kerman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemplating Music is a book for all serious music lovers. Here is the first full-scale of ideas and ideologies in music over the past forty years; a period during which virtually every aspect of music was transformed. With this book, Joesph Kerman establishes the place of music study firmly in the mainstream of modern intellectual history. He treats not only the study of the history of Western art music--with which musicology is tradtionally equated--but also sometimes vexed relations between music history and other fields: music theory and analysis, ethnomusicology, and music criticism. Kerman sees and applauds a change in the study of music towarda critical orientation, As examples, he presents a fascinating vignettes of Bach research in the 1950's and Beethoven studies in the 1960's. He sketched the work of prominent scholars and theorists: Thurston Dart, Charles Rosen, Leonard B. Meyer, Heinrich Schenker, Miltion Babbit, and many others. And he comments on such various subjects as the amazing absorption of Stephen Foster's songs into the cannons of black music, the new intensity of Verdi research, controversies about performance on historical instruments, and the merits and demerits of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Comtemplating Music is fulled with wisdom and trenchant commmentary. It will spark controversy among musicologists of all stripes and will give many musicians and amateurs an entirely new perspective on the world of music.
