Assignment
Each question should keep to two to three paragraphs.
Questions
Unit 1
• What made Arcangelo Corelli so important in the aspirational social scene of late ?seventeenth-century Rome? ?
• What might Corelli's patrons have stood to gain from the act of patronage? ?
• What unique aspects of Rome's power structure/social scene led to Corelli's success?
Unit 2
• Think about Haydn's various roles as a composer during his lifetime. How did his ?economic circumstances/job responsibilities affect his compositional output?
• Consider Haydn's time in Esterháza with Prince Nikolaus and his time in London with ?Salomon. How do both settings reflect concert culture in their respective locations?
• Consider concert culture in Vienna in the early 1800s and Beethoven's relationship with ?his patrons. How did these circumstances affect Beethoven's career and compositional output? How did Beethoven's patron relationship differ from Haydn's? Be prepared to discuss how specific works support your answers.
Unit 4
• Think about how gender roles affected the musical lives of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel ?and Clara Wieck Schumann. How did these roles affect their careers (or lack thereof) in performance and composition? Be prepared to discuss how specific works support your answers.
• Be prepared to discuss the idea of chamber music in the nineteenth century. What place does the piano trio occupy in the domestic and/or professional musical spheres of the nineteenth century? Why might Clara Schumann have decided to compose piano trios? What type of critical reception did this piece receive? Why is this important?
• Consider again the way gender roles affected professional musical life in the late nineteenth century, as well as the role the canon played in reception of works by female composers. How did Amy Beach adhere to societal expectations of her gender? How did she defy them?
Unit 5
• Consider the audience for Italian opera in eighteenth century London. How would you ?describe this audience socially and culturally? What do they value as consumers? Be prepared to discuss how specific works support your answers.
Unit 8
• Who were the intended consumers of Duke Ellington's "Jungle Music" at the Cotton ?Club in Harlem? How might this connect with what we have described as "imagined" ?ideas of Africa?
• Why did Darius Milhaud incorporate jazz elements into his La creation du monde? What ?are some of these elements? How might this connect with what we have described as ?"imagined" ideas of Africa?
• Why does William Grant Still incorporate jazz elements into his Afro-American ?Symphony? What are some of these elements? How might this connect with what we have described as "imagined" ideas of Africa? How might it also be more complicated?
Unit 9
• Be able to briefly describe the origins of jazz in Weimar Germany. Do modern scholars ?consider German jazz of the 1920s to have been based on "legitimate" American jazz? Be ?able to briefly explain their reasoning.
• What things did jazz represent in the operas of Weimar Germany? What did it represent ?and/or why was it used by Ernst Krenek in Jonny spielt auf? What did it represent and/or ?why was it used by Kurt Weill in MahagonnySongspieland The Threepenny Opera?
• What is a Zeitoper? What elements make Krenek'sJonny spielt auf fit within this genre? ?How does the music in Krenek'sJonny spielt auf contribute to the work's ?contemporaneity?
• How does The Threepenny Opera engage with ideas of social responsibility? What is the ?work's goal? How do Weill and Brecht try to accomplish this goal? How does the music help to further these goals?