An Immigrant’s Musical Memoir

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-95
Author(s):  
Peter Mercer-Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Hymn Tunes

This chapter centers on the 1819 Original Collection compiled by Arthur Clifton, an English musician who had emigrated to Baltimore in 1817 (changing his name, from Antony Corri, in the process). Though not a commercial success, this pathbreaking volume was the first American publication to present a substantial body of material drawn from European classical music in psalmodic form, containing 21 psalm and hymn tunes culled variously from the work of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Such adaptations had been enjoying a modest vogue in England since around the turn of the century, but only half a dozen or so had appeared in the United States. Clifton relied on existing London publications for inspiration—many of the European melodies he includes had already been adapted by English compilers. But he returns to the classical music sources themselves in almost every case, developing his own meticulously crafted body of adaptations.

Gems of Exquisite Beauty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mercer-Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
American Life ◽  
Hymn Tunes ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
To Come

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, many Americans first encountered European classical music through excerpts captured in the form of psalm and hymn tunes. Psalmody was the United States’ best-selling form of popular music through the early 19th century, sales of tune books reaching in some instances into the hundreds of thousands. Tunes lifted from Haydn, Mozart, and other major European composers first found a regular place in this market in the early 1820s, hundreds appearing by the early 1850s. This book explores the place of this repertoire in 19th-century American life, surveying its historical rise and fall. The tradition’s foremost pioneer was Arthur Clifton, an accomplished London musician who emigrated to Baltimore in 1817. Clifton’s 1819 Original Collection—which included 21 psalmodic adaptations of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven’s work—was a commercial failure, but a pathbreaking harbinger of things to come. Lowell Mason’s 1822 Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection—a runaway best-seller that launched Mason’s career as the era’s most influential American musician—also included 21 such adaptations, bringing the practice into broad public view. Only in the early 1840s, however, did the tradition catch fire, hundreds of such tunes appearing across a decade of feverish activity. This book’s final chapter steps back for a broad-ranging engagement with this repertoire in creative terms. Far beyond simple excerpts, the most ambitious of these adaptations represent inventive, resourcefully crafted conduits through which numerous dimensions of Europe’s musical practices were brought within reach of the American masses.

scholarly journals Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesla M. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Federal Sentencing Guidelines ◽  
State Supervision ◽  
Capital Crimes

Civil rights cemented its place on the national agenda with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, fair housing legislation, federal enforcement of school integration, and the outlawing of discriminatory voting mechanisms in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Less recognized but no less important, the Second Reconstruction also witnessed one of the most punitive interventions in United States history. The death penalty was reinstated, felon disenfranchisement statutes from the First Reconstruction were revived, and the chain gang returned. State and federal governments revised their criminal codes, effectively abolishing parole, imposing mandatory minimum sentences, and allowing juveniles to be incarcerated in adult prisons. Meanwhile, the Law Enforcement Assistance Act of 1965 gave the federal government an altogether new role in crime control; several subsequent policies, beginning with the Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and culminating with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, ‘war on drugs,’ and extension of capital crimes, significantly altered the approach. These and other developments had an exceptional and long-lasting effect, with imprisonment increasing six-fold between 1973 and the turn of the century. Certain groups felt the burden of these changes most acutely. As of the last census, fully half of those imprisoned are black and one in three black men between ages 20 and 29 are currently under state supervision. Compared to its advanced industrial counterparts in western Europe, the United States imprisons at least five times more of its citizens per capita.

Did quality of life for older cancer survivors improve with the turn of the century in the United States?

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-105
Author(s):  
Amandeep R. Mahal ◽  
Laura D. Cramer ◽  
Elyn H. Wang ◽  
Shiyi Wang ◽  
Amy J. Davidoff ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
United States ◽  
Cancer Survivors ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century

Was There a Golden Age of Flexible Wages? Evidence from Ohio Manufacturing, 1892–1910

1990 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Sundstrom
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Work Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
Wage Flexibility ◽  
Pay Cuts ◽  
Occupational Composition

Several macroeconomic studies have found evidence of diminishing cyclical wage flexibility in the United States since the turn of the century. But the importance of wage reductions during downturns must be questioned even for the era of allegedly flexible wages. This article shows that during the severe contractions of 1893 and 1908 only a small minority of Ohio manufacturing workers experienced cuts in their wage rates.The apparent downward flexibility of average earnings in these data was largely the consequence of changes in the occupational composition of the employed work force rather than pay cuts for individual workers.

“The Hall Does Not Make the Space”: Disrupting Concert Hall Norms in Hannibal's One Land, One River, One People

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Benjamin Safran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
Late Capitalism

AbstractHannibal's cheering and shouting along with his request for audience participation during the 2015 premiere of his composition One Land, One River, One People caused a stir and created discomfort among the Philadelphia Orchestra audience. I interpret his work as an example of a successful musical direct action within contemporary orchestral music. By exposing and subverting the traditions of the classical concert experience, One Land, One River, One People highlights social boundaries within the genre of classical music itself. I apply Robin James's (2015) concept of Multiracial White Supremacy, or MRWaSP, to contemporary orchestral classical music of the United States. Under late capitalism, MRWaSP helps to explain the potential appeal to an orchestra of commissioning Hannibal, who is known as a “genre-crossing” composer rooted in classical and jazz. Yet I argue that the way in which Hannibal performs his identity along with the piece's inclusion of audience participation allow the music to resist functioning as expected under MRWaSP. Rather than promoting a sense that—as one might expect from the title—we are all “one people,” I see the piece as revealing racial difference and as speaking truth to power.

The United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Sharman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Patriot Act ◽  
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ◽  
The Us ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Successful Prevention

This chapter begins by tracing the origins of the anti-kleptocracy cause in the United States, starting with the harsh Cold War environment and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. It explores the status quo ante of dictators being able to launder their funds in the US financial system with impunity immediately before and after the turn of the century. At this time, there was no law prohibiting American banks and other institutions receiving the proceeds of foreign corruption. The USA Patriot Act closed this legal loophole, yet practice lagged, and laws at first failed to have much of an impact. More recent cases indicate at least partial effectiveness, however, with instances of successful prevention and some looted wealth confiscated and returned.

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