Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) was a revolutionary Russian composer whose compositions forever changed the musical world. The son of a common mining engineer, Tchaikovsky grew to become one of the most influential composers in history. He was a professor of music theory and harmony at one of Russia’s most esteemed music conservatories and toured around the United States and Western Europe. He wrote eleven operas, six symphonies, four concertos, three ballets, three string quartets, and numerous other works in a relatively short time of only thirty years of active composition (“Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky”). His characteristic eloquent melodies and expressive supporting harmonies made him globally famous and were the “epitome of late Russian music opulence” (“Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky”). Today, he continues to be world renown for his extremely famous ballet The Nutcracker (1892) and his virtuosic concerto Violin Concerto in D Major (1881). Even more impressive is the fact that Tchaikovsky, however successful, faced many hardships in his life. He became emotionally distraught many times throughout his life and during the worst cases, even considered suicide. However, it is precisely these hardships that brought out the best in him and helped him excel as a composer. Even from early childhood Tchaikovsky showed a strong passion and fascination for music. Born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia, and the son of a successful mining engineer, Tchaikovsky received a strong education and took piano lessons from the age of 5. In his youth and for the rest of his life Tchaikovsky idolized Mozart’s music, which was not very famous or well-known at the time in Russia. His parents, who were supportive of their child’s musical ... ... middle of paper ... ...olden, Anthony. Tchaikovsky: a Biography. New York: Random House, 1995. Print. Longyear, Rey M. "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky." Great Lives from History: The Nineteenth Century. Ed. John Powell. 4 vols. Salem Press, 2007. Salem History Web. 28 Nov. 2011. “Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.” EBSCOhost – world’s foremost premium research database service. Columbia University Press, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. "Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Biography - life, family, parents, story, death, wife, school, mother, son." Encyclopedia of World Biography. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. . Poznansky, Alexander. Tchaikovsky: the quest for the inner man. New York: Schirmer Books, 1991. Print. Williams, Edward. "Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich." World Book Encyclopedia. 2010 ed. Chicago: World Book, Inc., 2010. 61-62. Print.
The Salem, Massachusetts Witch Trials have generated extensive evaluation and interpretation. To explain the events in Salem, psychological, political, environmental, physical, and sociological analysis have all been examined. The authors Linnda Caporael, Elaine Breslaw, Anne Zeller, and Richard Latner all present differing perspectives to speculate about the events of the Salem Witch Trials. This changing interpretation and perspective has resulted in an extensive historiography to explain the
When one evokes The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the image that comes to most peoples minds are that of witches with pointed hats riding broomsticks. This is not helped by the current town of Salem, Massachusetts, which profits from the hundreds of thousands of tourists a year by mythologizing the trials and those who were participants. While there have been countless books, papers, essays, and dissertations done on this subject, there never seems to be a shortage in curiosity from historians on these events. Thus, we have Bernard Rosenthal's book, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692, another entry in the historiographical landscape of the Salem Witch Trials. This book, however, is different from most that precede it in that it does not focus on one single aspect, character, or event; rather Rosenthal tells the story of Salem in 1692 as a narrative, piecing together information principally from primary documents, while commenting on others ideas and assessments. By doing so, the audience sees that there is much more to the individual stories within the trials, and chips away at the mythology that has pervaded the subject since its happening. Instead of a typical thesis, Rosenthal writes the book as he sees the events fold out through the primary documents, so the book becomes more of an account of what happened according to primary sources in 1692 rather than a retelling under a new light.
McBain, J. ‘The Salem Witch Trials: A Primary Source History of the Witchcraft Trials in Salem, Massachusetts’, (Rosen Publishing Group, New York, 2002)
Salem in the 1600s was a textbook example of an extremist society with sexist norms and no separation of church and state. Because it had no laws, only people considered authorities on law, it was always a society based on norms laid down by the first settlers and severity on the verge of madness. The power was imbalanced, focused subjectively in the people who had means to control others. Some people attempted to right the wrongs of the powerful, as people are wont to do eventually. Because of them, change indeed came to Salem, slowly and after excessive ruin and death. Before the rebels’ impact took hold, Salem’s Puritan society was a religious dystopian disaster, a fact illustrated excellently by Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. This religious dystopian disaster carried many flaws and conflicts that can be seen in other societies, both historical and modern.
John M. Murrin’s essay Coming to Terms with the Salem Witch Trials helps detail the events of these trials and explains why they might have occurred. The witch trials happened during a “particularly turbulent time in the history of colonial Massachusetts and the early modern atlantic world” (Murrin, 339). Salem came to be in 1629 and less than seventy years later found itself in a mess of witch craft.
Kent, Deborah. Witchcraft Trials: Fear, Betrayal, and Death in Salem. Library ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2009. Print.
Schwartz, Boris. Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1981. 2nd edition. Indiana University Press, 1983.
Salem Village, Massachusetts was the home of a Puritan community with a strict moral code through 1691. No one could have ever anticipated the unexplainable events that were to ambush the community’s stability. The crisis that took place in Salem in 1962 still remains a mystery, but the accusations made by the young girls could be a result of ergot poisoning or the need for social power; this leads the people of Salem to succumb to the genuine fear of witchcraft.
Even before Salem Village was established there was a separation between its future inhabitants. The people on the western part of Salem Village were farming families that wanted to separate from the Town (Sutter Par.2). On the east side of the Salem Village were the people who had made a living on the rich harbor and were strongly apposed to leaving the security of the larger Salem Town (Par. 2). By 1672 the inhabitants of Salem Village had separated from Salem Town, built a meetinghouse, and hired their ow...
In the passage by Igor Stravinsky, he uses not only comparison and contrast, but also language to convey his point of view about the conductors of the time and their extreme egotism. Stravinsky believes that conductors exploit the music for their own personal gain, so rather, he looks on them in a negative light.
In 1692 the area of Salem town and Salem village became very vulnerable to conflict. Severe weather such as hurricanes had damaged land and crops, the effects of King Phillips War began to impact New England society, and colonists were being forced off of the frontiers by Native peoples. The Church and the government were in heavy conflict. And those residing in Salem began to grow suspicious of one another when some prospered and others hadn’t (Marcus, p13).
6 vols. of a book. Salem Press, 2008. Salem History Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia on September 25, 1906, Shostakovich was the second of three children born to Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina. His father was of Polish descent but both his parents were Siberian natives. Dmitri was a child prodigy as a pianist and composer. He began taking piano lessons from his mother at the age of nine. He displayed an incredible talent to remember what his mother had played at the previous lesson and would get caught pretending to read the music, playing the music from his last lesson instead of what was placed in front of him.
Sergei was born in Oneg, Russia, to an aristocratic family who was falling apart. His father was a gambler and a drinker and spent all of their family’s wealth on his addictions. Their family, which consisted of Sergei’s mother and five other siblings, were forced to move from their mansion to a small apartment in the city of Petersburg. But they moved just at the wrong time, for a sickness was spreading. Sergei’s sister Sophia died from the illness. Guilt heavy on his father’s shoulders, he abandoned his family, never to return. Sergei’s mother, Lubov, did her best to raise her children. She was a pianist, as was her father before her, and so she began to teach Sergei at the young age of four. He showed much talent for the piano, but when he was old enough to join school on a scholarship, Sergei began to show his father’s habits. He took up gambling and wasted his money, and his family members, including his cousin Alexander Siloti, were very concerned. Alexander was also a musician, and, to save ...
Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular of all composers. The reasons are several and understandable. His music is extremely tuneful, opulently and colourfully scored, and filled with emotional passion. Undoubtedly the emotional temperature of the music reflected the composer's nature. He was afflicted by both repressed homosexuality and by the tendency to extreme fluctuations between ecstasy and depression. Tchaikovsky was neurotic and deeply sensitive, and his life was often painful, but through the agony shone a genius that created some of the most beautiful of all romantic melodies. With his rich gifts for melody and special flair for writing memorable dance tunes, with his ready response to the atmosphere of a theatrical situation and his masterly orchestration, Tchaikovsky was ideally equipped as a ballet composer. His delightful fairy-tale ballets, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker are performed more than any other ballets. Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky's first ballet, was commissioned by the Imperial Theatres in Moscow in 1875. He used some music from a little domestic ballet of the same title, composed for his sister Alexandra's children in 1871.