Dominick Argento’s The Masque of Angels is a short opera which is not often performed, yet displays great use of Argento’s composition style. The Masque of Angels encompasses serialism aspects of twentieth century opera, as well as twentieth-century adaptation of the English masque through the composer’s use of atonality, symbolism and twelve-tone writing.
Dominick Argento was born in York, Pa., in 1927. He attended Peabody Conservatory where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and attended Eastman School of Music in Minnesota where he earned his Ph.D. Argento became the director of Hilltop Opera in Baltimore and later joined the staff at Eastman, where he taught theory and composition. In 1958, he joined the staff of the Department of Music at the University of Minnesota, where he taught music until 1997. Argento also served time in the military as a cryptographer in North Africa during World War
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His works are based on serial motives. For example, his work, A Water Bird Talk (1974), is based on two serial motives. One motive represents a bird, while the other represents the professor who realizes that his wretched marriage is reflected in their mating habits. Although several Argento operas explore his hallmark theme of self-discovery, no two are alike. Postcard from Morocco is his most well-known and performed opera. Unfortunately, his opera The Masque of Angels is rarely heard or performed.
The Masque of Angels was written for the occasion as the first Performing Arts commission of the Walker Art Center. The Masque premiered at the Tyron Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis on January 9, 1964. With only a few exceptions, Argento chose prose texts rather than poems for his song cycles. When writing operatic pieces, he was blessed with many fantastic librettists. The libretto for The Masque of Angels was written by John
Under what circumstances would you go through to better and provide for your family? Would you embark on these six deadly sins above to just get a simple loaf of bread on the table? There is no solid blame or black and white definite answer throughout this novel, The Devil’s Highway. The author Luis Alberto Urrea takes his readers to different perspectives and offers different points of view whether you appear to be a walker, coyote, or the border control on the topic of illegal immigration. Being that Urrea puts the reader in each person shoe’s and truly sees what immense, harsh, conditions for example these immigrants had to go through. Again there is no solid blame or black and white answers, both sides are at fault and in need of a solution to the problem.
The first composition, "Miserere Mei, Deus", was produced by Gregorio Allegri in 1638. I learned this, as I read along with the well-thought-out program that was given. As we, the audience, looked up to the vocalists, we were entranced by the consuming sound. The room filled with a vibrant melody, in which the harmonization and tone color was spectacular. The emotion conveyed throughout the room was one of absorption and delight. During this piece, the sopranos hit such high notes, that I was astounded. Being a person who participates in concert choir, I understand the level of commitment and talent it takes to reach those notes and stay in tune. This ...
the commander of the Rebel army, General Robert E Lee. General Lee is skeptical too of
Mark Danner, an editor for the New York Times magazine, recounts in The Massacre at El Mozote a horrific crime against humanity committed by a branch of the Salvadorian army. He gives multiple points of views and cites numerous eye witnesses to try and piece together something that has been tucked away by the government at the time. In December, of 1981, news reports were leaked to major newspapers in the united states about an atrocity committed and a total massacre of a hamlet in El Salvador, known as El Mozote, or the Thicket. At first, the account was of over a thousand civilians, women men and children with no guerrilla affiliation were massacred. Danner pieces together the testimonies of the survivors, and interviews with officers in the Salvadorian army.
Critical Evaluation-Assisi A poem that I have been studying recently is Assisi by Norman McCaig, which I found very interesting to read because it made a statement which relates to our world today even though the poem was wrote about thirty or forty years ago. The poem has lots of ideas including effective figures of speech, good choice of words, important images and irony. The statement that McCaig makes is, where ever there is great wealth it always exists along side great poverty.
In the novel The Great Santini by Pat Conroy, the reader meets the main character, Bull Meechem. Bull Meechem had many outstanding traits good and awful. Bull Meechem can be mistakenly called a racist though he is truly an abusive father, and yet he is courageous and honorable at times of war and then at moment before his death. Bull’s male desire to have control over his family often gets the best of him, the reader witnesses him physically and mentally attacking his family in drunken rages control for self confidence and for just pure dominance. Throughout the novel Bull expresses how at times he acts like how he believed white southerners should act by making degrading comments to African Americans. The reader also is able to see the image of an American dream when they experience Bull serving in the Marine Corps.
The killer angels is a world acclaimed novel that was written by an author known as Michael Shaara. In the year 1975, it was granted the Pulitzer Prize for creative writing. It gives us in details the occurrences of the four days in the Battle of Gettysburg. This was during the American Civil War that occurred in the year 1863. At this time, troops that comprised of both the Union and Confederacy were at war in town called Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. This is a piece of story that is driven by disposition and narrated from the point of view of various heroes (Hartwig, 1996).
Born Sinner Aren’t we all sinners? We all have committed acts of violence at some points in our lives, and our answer we are human, we are wired that way or it is our instinct. People have a habit of hurting one another and it comes naturally to them. After reading Flight by Sherman Alexie, violence is a prominent theme throughout the novel. This idea of aggression is represented in many different ways, shapes, and forms.
Author Mariano Azuela's novel of the Mexican revolution, The Underdogs, conveys a fictional representation of the revolution and the effects it had on the Mexican men and women who lived during that time. The revolutionary rebels were composed of different men grouped together to form small militias against the Federalists, in turn sending them on journeys to various towns, for long periods of time. Intense fighting claimed the lives of many, leaving women and children behind to fend for themselves. Towns were devastated forcing their entire populations to seek refuge elsewhere. The revolution destroyed families across Mexico, leaving mothers grieving for their abducted daughters, wives for their absent husbands, and soldiers for their murdered friends. The novel's accurate depiction also establishes some of the reasons why many joined the revolution, revealing that often, those who joined were escaping their lives to fight for an unknown cause.
In Kleist’s novella The Marquise of O, the narrative depicts the account of the Marquise of O’s, a young Italian window and a “lady of unblemished reputation”(Kleist 68), sudden impregnation and her subsequent attempts to solve the question of the paternity of her child. Through the contrasting interactions between the characters from the Marquise’s estrangement with her family to her eventual reconciliation, Kleist utilizes the search for her unborn child’s father to provide a social commentary on how tensions of uncertainty complicate the search for truth and identity within established gender relationships and traditional social constructs.
There is perhaps no greater joy in life than finding one’s soul mate. Once found, there is possibly no greater torment than being forced to live without them. This is the conflict that Paul faces from the moment he falls in love with Agnes. His devotion to the church and ultimately God are thrown into the cross hairs with the only possible outcome being one of agonizing humiliation. Grazia Deledda’s The Mother presents the classic dilemma of having to choose between what is morally right and being true to one’s own heart. Paul’s inability to choose one over the other consumes his life and everyone in it.
In the poem pride, Dahlia Ravikovitch uses many poetic devices. She uses an analogy for the poem as a whole, and a few metaphors inside it, such as, “the rock has an open wound.” Ravikovitch also uses personification multiple times, for example: “Years pass over them as they wait.” and, “the seaweed whips around, the sea bursts forth and rolls back--” Ravikovitch also uses inclusive language such as when she says: “I’m telling you,” and “I told you.” She uses these phrases to make the reader feel apart of the poem, and to draw the reader in. She also uses repetition, for example, repetition of the word years.
God has created man for Himself in grace and our souls yearn to return to God, to see Him face to face. Our desire for Him comes from Him; “We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 While the human soul naturally desires God, theologians have faced problems in arriving at a solution of where this desire is placed in our powers. This difficulty is known as the problem of the natural desire to see God. For the past 400 years this known problem has effected the relationship between nature to grace and the doctrine of the necessity of revelation for human fulfillment in Catholic theology and European philosophy, but nevertheless we can glean its solution in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Opera is a unique genre of spoken word and song accompanied by music. The music takes one through ascending and descending ranges of emotions. Mozart's Don Giovanni is a perfect example of how this genre emits a wide variety of feelings and attitudes. This "dark comedy seems to convey Mozart's feeling that events have both comical and serious dimensions…" (Kerman, 205). The opera, as a whole, is neither exclusively comedic nor entirely tragic.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” is a saying is commonly used to emphasize how ignorance can result in decisions that lead to unfavorable situations. Likewise, in Where Angels Fear to Tread, Edward Morgan Forster uses irony, point of view, and satire to effectively emphasize how stereotypes, prejudices, misunderstanding of cultural differences, and hypocrisy could lead to unfavorable circumstances. Where Angels Fear to Tread begins as a light and comedic novel but later develops to become more dense and tragic.