La prise du
pouvoir
1. What do you find to be most
striking about this short scene?
2. What does this scene indicate to
you the nature of Louis XIV's political power?
3. What can you determine about the
relationship between king and nobility?
4. What were some of the personal habits of
French nobles living in the seventeenth century?
5. List five characteristics of
social/class relations in France under the Ancien Regime during the reign of Louis XIV.
Eighteenth-Century
Music
1. Selection 1: Antonio Lucio Vivaldi,
1678-1741, Venice, La Primavera (spring) from The Four Seasons, opus 8 (1725). Concert
for violin, strings and continuo [in three parts]: Allegro, Largo e
pianissimo sempre, Allegro. Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. An early
use of imagery; harpsichord; relatively short concerto compared to Beethoven.
2. Selection 2: Johann Sebastian Bach,
1685-1750, Leipzig, Excerpts from Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Major, "St. Anne,"
s.552 (17??). Organ of St. Mary and Joseph's Cathedral.
3. Selection 3: Georg Friedreich
Handel, 1685-1759, Halle, excerpts from Messiah (1741),
including "Hallelujah." Messiah was first performed in Dublin, April
1742. New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein
conducting. Adele Addison, soprano, et al, and the Westminster Choir.
4. Selection 4: Franz Joseph Haydn, 1732-1809,
Rohrau, String Quartet #77 in C Major, "Emperor Quartet," opus 76, no.
3: Allegro; Pocco adagio, cantabile (that may be sung); Minuet, allegro;
Finale, presto (quick). This is the "minuet." Haydn Quartet of Lower Austria.
Selection 5: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756-1791,
Salzburg, Concerto for Piano in D Minor, no. 20, kv 466: Allegro, Romance,
Rondo (Allegro assai) (round). This is the "romance." Géza Anda and
the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The perfected concerto form.
Selection 6: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827, Bonn,
Symphony no. 5 in C Minor, opus 67: Allegro con brio (with gusto), Andante
con moto, Allegro, Allegro. This is the first movement. Herbert von
Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Selection 7: Beethoven, Symphony no. 9 in D
Minor, "Choral," written 1823. Otto Klemperer and the (London)
Philharmonic Orchestra. This is the last movement based on Friedreich
Schiller's "Ode to Joy.
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Declaration of the
Rights of Man
1. How did John Locke and the
American experience (Declaration of Independence and
Constitution) influence the terms of this document?
2. What were the central themes of
this document?
3. Why was this document written in
1789?
4. Were there any significant
differences between the rights of women and those of men?
5. According to the Declaration,
from where does the power of government originate, or, in other
words, where does sovereignty lie?
6. Were there any restrictions
noted in the Declaration on the rights of man?
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Impressionism
Precursors of the
Impressionists
- Eugène Delacroix,
1798-1863
- Camille Corot,
1796-1875
- Gustave Courbet,
1819-1877
- Edgar Degas,
1834-1917
- Edouard Manet, 1832-1883, son of
a Paris magistrate. Around him a group of young artists gathered
at the Café Guerbois, including Edgar Degas, Camille
Pissarro and occasionally Paul Cézanne. After 1869, the
group also included: Claude Monet, Pierre-August Renoir, Alfred
Sisley and Frédéric Bazille.
The Impressionists
Impressionists investigated the
ever-changing nature of light, time and space, and they tried to
create a sensation of fleeting time and light for a spontaneous,
unrehearsed, immediate effect. One common technique that they
employed was to use broken brush-strokes to imply haste, the
attempt to capture an image before it was gone. They also
painted casual poses that lacked detail and that gave a general
"impression," or sense, of a scene. Finally, they were committed
to working outdoors, en plein air, in bright light and
with bright colors and not in a confined studio.
In 1863, the official "salon" of
the French Academy turned down a number of entries for
exhibition. The painters appealed to Napoleon III, who allowed
them to exhibit in another gallery near the official salon. This
was called the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the
Rejected). One of the works exhibited there was Manet's Le
Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), and it
caused a huge commotion, which for us today is hard to
understand.
Then in 1874, Claude Monet
exhibited a painting called Impression--Sunrise. That painting
gave the movement its name. (A less credible theory of the
origins of the word states that a critics said they painted
impressions of an object and not the object itself.) Actually,
the first "impressionist" painting was probably La
Grenouillère (The Frog Pond), done by Monet and
Pierre-August Renoir in 1869.
Monet is also responsible for the
incredible series of four gigantic paintings of Les
Nymphéas (Water Lilies) that now hang in Le
Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. They were painted between
1903 and his death in 1926 and were his gift to the French people
for their sacrifices in World War I. They were first displayed
after his death.
Some impressionists
- Camille Pissarro,
1831-1903
- James Whistler,
1834-1903
- Alfred Sisley,
1839-1899
- Claude Monet,
1840-1926
- August Renoir,
1841-1919
- Berthe Morisot,
1841-1895
- Frédéric Bazille,
1841-1870
- Mary Cassatt,
1844-1926
- Henri de Toulouse-Latrec,
1864-1901
- Georges Seurat,
1859-1891
Post-Impressionists These
painters argued that a painting must represent an artist's
particular intellect and feelings. They wanted to make the
creative process even more private ("expressive")
- Paul Cézanne,
1839-1906
- Paul Gauguin,
1848-1903
- Vincent van Gogh,
1853-1890
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All Quiet on the
Western Front
1. How does the movie differ from
the book and why?
2. What kind of film-making
techniques does the director use to convey best the impact of war
on the soldiers?
3. Is their anything unusual about
this film, which was made in 1930?
4. What could the director have
done differently in making this picture?
5. What impact do you think this
movie had on audiences of the 1930s?
The Trial
1. How did this story reflect the
experience of Franz Kafka (1883-1924)?
2. Why is this film/work so
bizarre?
3. Did Kafka correctly discern the
nature of life in the twentieth century?
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Triumph of the
Will
1. List at least 10 (ten)
elements/techniques/images (for example the use of fire)
manipulated by the Nazis in this film to generate mass enthusiasm
for the Nazi movement.
2. How do you think German
audiences reacted to seeing this film in small theaters in the
1930s in the midst of the Great Depression?
3. Was this a successful propaganda
film, or was it merely a great documentary?
Genocide
1. What prevented the allies from
intervening against the death camp atrocities during the
war?
2. Why did the Genocide take
place?
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