The Fifties
Resources for History Workshop, the Fifties. Professor Rachel Devlin
Websites
- 10 Great American Musicals of the 1950sResource published by the British Film Institute.
- 50s Music Hits Play ListList of greatest song list of the fifties. It includes clips of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Dean Martin, Miles Davis, Fats Domino, etc.
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Aaron Copeland Collection from the Library of CongressOnline exhibition with images, photos and manuscripts created to celebrate the birth of the American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990).
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Beat Movement Poetry and BroadsidesThis collection documents and aesthetic and poetic expression in literature and in the arts in the 1950s that challenged the repressive nature of American society at the time. Includes posters and broadsides.
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Harry Belafonte – Calypso 1956 mixAmerican singer, actor, and civil rights activist, Belafonte popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s
Books
Chuck Berry: The autobiography by Call Number: Jazz and Robeson ML420.B365A3 1987ISBN: 0517566664Publication Date: 1989-01-13
The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin by
Gathered together in one volume for the first time- all of the incomparable song lyrics of Irving Berlin, whose career and work are the most important and all-encompassing in the history of American popular music. Berlin came from a poor immigrant family and began his career as a singing waiter, but by the time he was nineteen he was publishing his songs and quickly found fame with "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911. In the extraordinary six decades that followed, Berlin wrote one popular hit after another- "Blue Skies," "Always," "Cheek to Cheek," "White Christmas," "God Bless America," "There's No Business Like Show Business," and many, many more. He also wrote a number of the classics of musical theater's Golden Age, climaxing with Annie Get Your Gun. He penned three Astaire and Rogers films--Top Hat, Carefree, and Follow the Fleet--as well as the scores of Holiday Inn, Easter Parade, and other movies. The breadth of his accomplishments is staggering. Berlin's entire oeuvre is here--the lyrics of more than 1,200 songs (400 of which have never before appeared in print), along with anecdotal, historical, and musicological commentary and dozens of photographs. This beautiful volume is an invaluable contribution to the understanding and enjoyment of popular music in our time.
Call Number: Douglass ML54.6.B464K55 2000ISBN: 0679419438Publication Date: 2001-10-09
Digital Performance: a history of new media in theater, dance, performance art, and installation by
The historical roots, key practitioners, and artistic, theoretical, and technological trends in the incorporation of new media into the performing arts.The past decade has seen an extraordinarily intense period of experimentation with computer technology within the performing arts. Digital media has been increasingly incorporated into live theater and dance, and new forms of interactive performance have emerged in participatory installations, on CD-ROM, and on the Web. In Digital Performance, Steve Dixon traces the evolution of these practices, presents detailed accounts of key practitioners and performances, and analyzes the theoretical, artistic, and technological contexts of this form of new media art. Dixon finds precursors to today's digital performances in past forms of theatrical technology that range from the deus ex machina of classical Greek drama to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk (concept of the total artwork), and draws parallels between contemporary work and the theories and practices of Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Futurism, and multimedia pioneers of the twentieth century. For a theoretical perspective on digital performance, Dixon draws on the work of Philip Auslander, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and others. To document and analyze contemporary digital performance practice, Dixon considers changes in the representation of the body, space, and time. He considers virtual bodies, avatars, and digital doubles, as well as performances by artists including Stelarc, Robert Lepage, Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson, Blast Theory, and Eduardo Kac. He investigates new media's novel approaches to creating theatrical spectacle, including virtual reality and robot performance work, telematic performances in which remote locations are linked in real time, Webcams, and online drama communities, and considers the "extratemporal" illusion created by some technological theater works. Finally, he defines categories of interactivity, from navigational to participatory and collaborative. Dixon challenges dominant theoretical approaches to digital performance-including what he calls postmodernism's denial of the new-and offers a series of boldly original arguments in their place.
Call Number: RUonlineISBN: 0262527529Publication Date: 2015-01-30
The Leonard Bernstein Letters by
"With their intellectual brilliance, humor and wonderful eye for detail, Leonard Bernstein's letters blow all biographies out of the water."--The Economist (2013 Book of the Year) Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician--a brilliant conductor who attained international superstar status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals (West Side Story), symphonies (Age of Anxiety), choral works (Chichester Psalms), film scores (On the Waterfront), and much more. Bernstein was also an enthusiastic letter writer, and this book is the first to present a wide-ranging selection of his correspondence. The letters have been selected for the insights they offer into the passions of his life--musical and personal--and the extravagant scope of his musical and extra-musical activities. Bernstein's letters tell much about this complex man, his collaborators, his mentors, and others close to him. His galaxy of correspondents encompassed, among others, Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Thornton Wilder, Boris Pasternak, Bette Davis, Adolph Green, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and family members including his wife Felicia and his sister Shirley. The majority of these letters have never been published before. They have been carefully chosen to demonstrate the breadth of Bernstein's musical interests, his constant struggle to find the time to compose, his turbulent and complex sexuality, his political activities, and his endless capacity for hard work. Beyond all this, these writings provide a glimpse of the man behind the legends: his humanity, warmth, volatility, intellectual brilliance, wonderful eye for descriptive detail, and humor. "The correspondence from and to the remarkable conductor is full of pleasure and insights."--The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "Exhaustive, thrilling [and] indispensable."--USA Today (starred review)
Call Number: RUonlineISBN: 0300186541Publication Date: 2013-10-29
Music in the USA: a documentary companion by
Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion charts a path through American music and musical life using as guides the words of composers, performers, writers and the rest of us ordinary folks who sing, dance, and listen. The anthology of primary sources contains about 160 selections from 1540 to 2000. Sometimes the sources are classics in the literature around American music, for example, the Preface to the Bay Psalm Book, excerpts from Slave Songs of the United States, and Charles Ives extolling Emerson. But many other selections offer uncommon sources, including a satirical story about a Yankee music teacher; various columns from 19th-century German American newspapers; the memoirs of a 19th-century diva; Lottie Joplin remembering her husband Scott; a little-known reflection of Copland about Stravinsky; an interview with Muddy Waters from the Chicago Defender; a letter from Woody Guthrie on the "spunkfire" attitude of a folk song; a press release from the Country Music Association; and the Congressional testimony around "Napster." "Sidebar" entries occasionally bring a topic or an idea into the present, acknowledging the extent to which revivals of many kinds of music play a role in American contemporary culture. This book focuses on the connections between theory and practice to enrich our understanding of the diversity of American musical experiences. Designed especially to accompany college courses which survey American music as a whole, the book is also relevant to courses in American history and American Studies.
Call Number: RUonlineISBN: 9780195139877Publication Date: 2008-09-26
Reading Abstract Expressionism: context and critique by
No detailed description available for "Reading Abstract Expressionism".
Call Number: RUonlineISBN: 0300185723Publication Date: 1991-04-24
