"Normal nymphs," the junior elocution class at Southern Oregon University, ca, 1888-1889.
Full information: https://cdm16085-contentdm-oclc-org.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/digital/collection/p15013coll6/id/38
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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cherry valley forever
styofa doing anything
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wallacepolsom

titsay

JVL

Kaledo Art
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

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Misplaced Lens Cap
RMH

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

Andulka
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
we're not kids anymore.
Sweet Seals For You, Always

Product Placement

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@elocutionaryarts
"Normal nymphs," the junior elocution class at Southern Oregon University, ca, 1888-1889.
Full information: https://cdm16085-contentdm-oclc-org.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/digital/collection/p15013coll6/id/38
Episode 108 of Sound Expertise What if feminist music history isn’t just about elevating composers like Amy Beach and Clara Wieck Schumann, but also about understanding how everyday wome…
“I shouldn’t tell you this, but she advocates dirty books…. Chaucer…Rabelais... BALZAC!” It’s a laugh line any actor would crave, and it advances the plot
A Recitation Anthology is the Perfect Christmas Present
1) Lois B. Nichols of Baker City [Oregon?] received The Peerless Reciter, or Popular Program, by Henry Davenport Northrop, from her mother on Christmas 1895. She was probably about 22 at the time.
2) Media [Estella] McLaughlin of Hancock, Maryland, received Students’ Compendium of Vocal and Physical Culture, by Maria L. Pratt, M.D., and Mrs. Grace Townsend, for Christmas from Mr. and Mrs. McLaughlin in 1896.
3) James E. came into possession of The Ideal Orator and Manual of Elocution by John Wesley Hanson and Lillian Woodward Gunckel at Christmas in 1902.
Music in the Trenches: A Christmas Essay
And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong
And mocks the song,
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christmas Bells
The recitation books of the late-nineteenth century inevitably contain a selection of patriotic texts, necessary for the period’s rituals of memorialization and national pride. Civic events held in town squares, cemeteries, and school auditoriums took place on the fourth of July, Memorial Day, or the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln. Many of the poems recited at such events have not worn well. The overblown praise of bold boys in blue, the saccharine tales of little drummer boys, the sentimental stories of dying soldiers and their mothers seem naïve and clichéd now. It is difficult to imagine who could have penned such texts or espoused such sentiments. The symbolic reverberations of the acts of heroism they hailed—old Barbara Frietchie’s declaration, “Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag”—are somehow lost to us. Given how many humorous parodies of Whittier’s Barbara Frietchie were also found in poetry anthologies, we might speculate that people of the time found the self-sacrificing sentiments as suspect as we do. Yet for the most part, darker visions, such as Longfellow’s 1863 Christmas Bells, do not find regularly find their way into volumes declaring the glories of victory and national pride.
Every now and then, the harsh realities of long ago wars surface in this literature. The cover of George M. Baker’s Grand Army Speaker of 1888 shows a Civil War veteran missing his left arm, with a wooden stick to replace his right leg. In the anonymously published poem, “Searching for the Slain,” a mother and her daughter-in-law go out on to the battlefield at night to find the body of their loved one, stepping carefully amidst moaning, dying soldiers. The sights of war’s carnage are masked by darkness, yet horrifying all the same. These sorts of portraits of war become more prominent after World War I. A little anthology published in 1918, Wartime and Patriotic Selections for Recitation and Reading by Carleton B. Case, represents a moment of upheaval. Within its olive and khaki paperback covers are still the traditional patriotic and sentimental texts about the flag and “Somebody’s Darling” from earlier wars. But one can also find the hard, tight poetry of the modern age being born: the flowery language of the past cannot capture the terrors of running from mustard gas or the degradation of a generation of young men dying in muddy trenches.
Case’s anthology contains a short poem by Frederick Niven, called “A Carol in Flanders,” that tells of the famous World War I Christmas Truce, where opponents set aside their rifles and met each other between the trenches. The events of this day have been celebrated numerous times since, mythologized in books, songs, movies (Joyeux Noel), and even an opera (Silent Night). This moment of hope seems modern to us, as it comes not with calls to bravery, but a pointed recognition of the huge forces that individuals are only sometimes able to transcend. Niven’s poem tells us that “Not all the Emperors and Kings, Financiers, and they / Who rule us could prevent these things—For it was Christmas Day.” John McCutcheon’s song, Christmas in the Trenches, penned almost seventy years later, ends with the similar reminder, “That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame.”
One theme in the poetry of war is not limited to a particular historical period: in many stories it is music that brings the sides together. As McCutcheon’s song describes it:
Well I was lying with my messmates on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound.
Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
“He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent, and the gas cloud rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.
Well as soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent.
The next they sang was “Stille Nacht.” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I,
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.
Looking back to poetic evocations of war in the nineteenth century, one can find the same story—the power of music to transform people into a single community. Nineteenth-century elocutionists regularly recited a work that went under the title, “Music on the Rappahannock.” Like the Christmas Truce, the Civil-War-era tale is based in truth. Capt. George E. Pingree recalled:
“One evening while I was on picket duty on the Rappahannock before the battle of Fredericksburg, a rebel band came down to the river and played ‘Dixie.’ A brigade band on our side responded with ‘John Brown’s Body.’ The rebel band retaliated with the ‘Bonny Blue Flag,’ and our band came at them with the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ So they played back and forth at each other until late in the evening. Suddenly all music ceased, and silence reigned; when all at once a musician on our side played splendidly on a key bugle ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ As the sweet sounds rose and fell on the evening air, and were wafted down the Falmouth Heights and over the Rappahannock, all listened intently, and I don’t believe there was a dry eye in all those assembled thousands. For a moment or two after the bugle ceased a dead silence reigned, broken then by a wild exultant cheer from both armies.”
“Music on the Rappahannock” was heard across America, including at the sorts of patriotic events where the poems described earlier were heard as well. What text performers used is difficult to determine, as there were at least five poems published about the incident. In some versions, the soldiers, like those of World War I, sing to each other. In John Thompson’s Music at Camp, they listen to the bugle playing Home, Sweet Home.
And yet once more the bugle sang
Above the stormy riot.
No shout upon the evening rang:
There reigned a holy quiet.
The sad slow stream its noiseless flood
Poured o’er the glistening pebbles;
All silent now the Yankees stood,
All silent stood the Rebels.
C. C. Somerville’s similar Home, Sweet, Home ends by stressing the men’s unity:
Then lo! By mutual sympathy there rose
A shout tremendous, forgetting they were foes,
A simultaneous shout, which came from every voice,
And seemed to make the very heavens rejoice.
The period’s reciters accompanied their performances of these poems with the actual music described in them. When the poem climaxed with the universal anthem, Home, Sweet Home, heard by the soldiers, audiences heard it too.
The “Music on the Rappahannock” texts, couched as they are in language that may not speak as eloquently to us now, nonetheless carry a message told and retold by subsequent generations. Not only on both sides of the Rappahannock River or across the trenches of wartime Europe, but also across space and time are human beings the same. Perhaps there will always be war and forces that lead people to turn against one another. But there will also always be poetry and music made by human beings to share a vision of something different, something better: of peace on earth, goodwill to all. Merry Christmas.
@MWilsonKimber
Hear the music here:
John McCutcheon sings Christmas in the Trenches
The King’s Singers sing Stille Nacht
Richard Conrad sings Home, Sweet Home
On the other side of the world, Kiri Te Kanawa sings Home, Sweet Home in her native tongue.
Christmas essay reblogged from several years ago.
Eugene Field (September 2, 1850 – November 4, 1895)
American writer, best known for his children’s poetry and humorous essays. He was known as the “poet of childhood.” (Wikipedia)
From our stacks: Title page and illustrations from Field Flowers: A Small Bunch of the Most Fragrant of Blossoms Gathered from the Broad Acres of Eugene Field’s Farm of Love. Published under the auspices of Mrs. Eugene Field with the approval of the Monument Committee for the purpose of creating a fund, the proceeds of which will be equally divided between the family of the late Eugene Field, and the fund for the building of a monument to the memory of the beloved poet of childhood. Mrs. Julia S. Field, 1896.
James Whitcomb Riley (October 7, 1849 – July 22, 1916)
American writer, poet, and best-selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the “Hoosier Poet” and “Children’s Poet” for his dialect works and his children’s poetry respectively. His poems tended to be humorous or sentimental, and of the approximately one thousand poems that Riley authored, the majority are in dialect. His famous works include “Little Orphant Annie” and “The Raggedy Man”. (Wikipedia)
“I shouldn’t tell you this, but she advocates dirty books…. Chaucer…Rabelais... BALZAC!” It’s a laugh line any actor would crave, and it advances the plot
From our stacks: Poem by Elizabeth Akers Allen from To My Mother. Compiled by Wallace and Frances Rice. Decorations by Elizabeth Ivins Jones. New York: Barse and Hopkins, 1912.
From our stacks: Illustrations from “Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night” By Rosa Hartwick Thorpe. Illustrated by F. T. Merrill and E. H. Garrett. Drawn and Engraved under the supervision of George T. Andrew. Boston: Lee and Shepard. New York: Charles T. Dillingham, 1882.
From Brown’s Standard Elocution and Speaker by Isaac Hinton Brown, 1911.
Figs. 1-9. Postures unfavourable to vocal delivery. A system of elocution, with special reference to gesture. 1841.
Greek-influenced dance circa 1920.
From our stacks: Illustrations from ‘Annabel Lee’ from The Raven, Annabel Lee & The Bells By Edgar Allan Poe. With Drawings by John Rea Neill. Chicago: The Reilly & Britton Co., 1910.
From our stacks: “Time of Clearer Twitterings - Title” from Riley Child-Rhymes. James Whitcomb Riley. With Hoosier Pictures by Will Vawter. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1898.
The Elocutionists is on Iowa Public Radio’s Best of 2017 List
Barney Sherman of Iowa Public Radio has listed Marian Wilson Kimber’s new book, The Elocutionists: Women Music and the Spoken Word, on his best of 2017 list. Hear the program at this link:
http://iowapublicradio.org/post/best-2017-folk-and-classical-music#stream/0
Insider Higher Ed is pleased to announce the winner of the 2017 #IHEreaderschoice award: The Making of Jane Austen, by Devoney Looser, a professor of English at Arizona State University. The book was published by Johns Hopkins University Press, which also published the winners last year and the year before. The press describes the book as answering the crucial question "Just how did Jane Austen become the celebrity author and the inspiration for generations of loyal fans she is today?" The answer comes from "the people, performances, activism and images that fostered Austen’s early fame, laying the groundwork for the beloved author we think we know." Those interested in Looser's writing may also enjoy an essay she wrote for Inside Higher Ed, "Jane Austen, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda," about what to do when your academic specialty suddenly captures public attention. Readers nominated books for consideration and then voted. Nominations were sought of university press books that would make the best gift for an academic this holiday season. The Making of Jane Austen won by a large margin. Five of those who voted for the winning book will receive copies. We'll also display it at next month's annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. We received 75 nominations, and more than 3,000 people voted. We are pleased to also honor these runners-up (in order): Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (University Press of Kentucky), by Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro, both from the English faculty at Spring Arbor University. Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy and Civil War in Mexico (University of Texas Press), by Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor of public affairs and security studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. What Editors Do: The Art, Craft and Business of Book Editing (University of Chicago Press), edited by Peter Ginna, who was most recently publisher and editorial director at Bloomsbury Press. The Elocutionists: Women, Music and the Spoken Word (University of Illinois Press), by Marian Wilson Kimber, an associate professor of music at the University of Iowa. Inside Higher Ed thanks all of those who nominated books (you can see them all here) and those who voted. We especially want to thank the scholars who expand the world of ideas with their writing -- and the publishers who allow them to reach broader audiences. We hope that when you are looking for the perfect gift this holiday season, or any time of year, you will think about scholarly books. Happy reading.
Marian Wilson Kimber’s The Elocutionists: Women, Music and the Spoken Word placed 5th in the Inside Higher Education Reader’s Choice voting.