Week 5 Music Discussion Post And Peer Review

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Week 5 Music Discussion Post And Peer Review

DISCUSSION POST MUST BE 10+ SENTENCES AND PEER REVIEW MUST BE 8+ SENTENCES BE POLITE STAY ON TOPIC AND DO NOT COMMENT ON GRAMMAR ERRORS ( WHEN WRITTING PEER REVIEW TALK DIRECTLY TO CLASSMATE)

1) DISCUSSION POST

“Intrusions in Asia; Opera and Society and a Dilemma” Please respond to one (1) of the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:

Watch Media

Background and tips on this discussion–THREE TOPICS–choose just one:

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  • Describe two (2) examples of how either black slaves or white abolitionists used literature or the visual arts as a form of protest against slavery. Compare this to a modern example of art used for social protest.
  • Describe the key motives involved in the increased presence of Westerners in India, China, and Japan in the 1700s and 1800s. Identify the key factors that led to Britain’s successful imposition of its presence and trade policies on China, despite communications like those from Emperor Ch’ien-lung (i.e., Qianlong) and Commissioner Lin Zexu (i.e., Lin Tse-hsu). Argue for or against the British policies regarding China in the 1800s, using analogies from our own modern times.
  • Read, listen to, and watch the sources for the opera composers at the Websites below and in this week’s Music Folder. Describe the major influences that Verdi, Wagner, or Puccini exerted upon opera in terms of making it more innovative, realistic, and even controversial. Next, consider Wagner and this dilemma: Wagner’s brilliance is clear because his works remain some of the most popular and admired productions in our own time. Yet, he was a blatantly antisemitic and held notions of racial purity, traits that have stained his artistic legacy. (This was compounded by the later celebration of Wagner’s music by Hitler and the Nazis). New York Times writer Anthony Tommasini wrote of Wagner in 2005: “How did such sublime music come from such a warped man? Maybe art really does have the power to ferret out the best in us.” So, consider the issue of whether we should or can separate the artist from the art, whether we can appreciate the art but reject the artist. Or whether we should reject both the person and his or her art. Identify one (1) modern musician or artist where this dilemma arises.

Explore:

American Dilemma–Slavery – The Art & Literature of Protest


Intrusions in Asia


Opera and Society

  • Chapter 30 (pp. 999-1004), Wagner and Verdi; (pp. 1133-1134), Puccini; review the Week 5 “Music Folder”
  • Huizenga article and audio selections at http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/04/…
  • Wagner video of a stage production (Tristan und Isolde) at
  • Verdi video clip of stage production (Rigoletto) at and a clip of the film at
  • Puccini video clip of stage production (Tosca) at

2) PEER REVIEW

Describe two (2) examples of how either black slaves or white abolitionists used literature or the visual arts as a form of protest against slavery. Compare this to a modern example of art used for social protest.

Two (2) examples of how black slaves used literature and the visual arts as a form of protest against slavery were through slave narratives and protest pamphlets.

Slave narratives were the primary form of African American literature in the 18th and 19th century, which provided first hand personal information and experience and struggles of slavery and free black Americans in the north. Examples of these narratives would be the Fredrick Douglass’s autobiography and the Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. While protest pamphlets were documents that illuminates a wider range of issues from justification, defending fugitives and anti-discrimination in the northern communities. An example of this would be Richard Allen and Absalom Jones’ Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People.

Modern day we still use books along with the different types of social media news etc. to tell our stories record and document our protests as they happen