Extra Credit Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Extra Credit - Assignment Example From this I learnt that Cultural background are inherited and developed which in return forms a collective and individual behavior that are socially acceptable or not (Tierney & Stephen, 65). These issues that are developed may be based on values, traditions, dangerous mitigations such as threat of an individual or public health or even knowledge availability. From this, I learnt that the cultural background is the major determinant of variance in cultures in different communities. In addition, I realized that human activities are the major factors that influence and have high impact on the development of cultural capacities. This is based on the fact cultural drivers are education and learning, art and heritage activities, architecture, urban and land shaping, information and amusement, structured occasions for social interactions, regulations of social behaviors such as marriage (Tierney & Stephen, 57 ). Having understood this, I am now able to appreciate diverse backgrounds and value their cultures and norms. Commemoration, whether involving, only you or your family can be very good as it brings people together. Often these events are very important such that we take pictures or souvenirs that will remind us of these events. One of the events that I can recall is a visit to the some archeological monument in our landscape. From my studies, on these monuments I found that there representations that were commemorated events of people. Among the monuments visited include the Drombeg Stone Circle in West. From my findings this is associated with the winter season that manifest a major incident in the ancient winter calendar and more so a burial indicator (Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques, 87-91) This was interesting as it had two hut sites and cooking site. Besides it there were stone circles that could signified a ritual dining site where large number of people met to mark winter season and celebrate

Igor Stravinsky Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Igor Stravinsky - Essay Example Stravinsky left Russia for the first time in 1910, going to Paris to attend the premiere of his ballet L'oiseau de feu (The Firebird) (Craft 20). During his stay in the city, he composed three major works for the Ballets Russes-L'oiseau de feu, Petrushka (1911), and Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1913). Eventually Stravinsky's music was noticed by Serge Diaghilev, the director of the Ballets Russes in Paris. He commissioned Stravinsky to write a ballet for his theater; so in 1911, Stravinsky traveled to Paris. That ballet ended up being the famous L'Oiseau de Feu. However, because of World War I and the October Revolution in Russia he moved to Switzerland in 1914. The first of Stravinsky's major stylistic periods (excluding some early minor works) was inaugurated by the three ballets he composed for Diaghilev. The ballets have several shared characteristics: they are scored for extremely large orchestras; they use Russian folk themes and motifs; and they bear the mark of Rimsky-Korsakov's imaginative scoring and instrumentation. The first of the ballets, L'oiseau de feu, is notable for its unusual introduction (triplets in the low basses) and sweeping orchestration. Petrushka, too, is distinctively scored and the first of Stravinsky's ballets to draw on folk mythology. But it is the third ballet, The Rite of Spring that is generally considered the apotheosis of Stravinsky's "Russian Period" (Hill 45-46). Other pieces from this period include: Renard (1916), Histoire du soldat (A Soldier's Tale) (1918), and Les Noces (The Wedding) (1923).The next phase of Stravinsky's compositional style, slightly overlapping the first, is marked by two works: Pulcinella 1920 and the Octet (1923) for wind instruments. Both of these works feature what was to become a hallmark of this period; that is, Stravinsky's return, or "looking back", to the classical music of Mozart and Bach and their contemporaries. This "neo-classical" style involved the abandonment of the large orchestras demanded by the ballets. In these new works, written roughly between 1920 and 1950, Stravinsky turns largely to wind instruments, the piano, and choral and chamber works. Some larger works from this period are the three symphonies: the Symphonie des Psaumes (Symphony of Psalms) (1930), Symphony in C (1940) and Symphony in Three Movements (1945). The pinnacle of this period is the opera The Rake's Progress completed in 1951. This opera, written to a libretto by Auden and based on the etchings of Hogarth, encapsulates everything that Stravinsky had perfected in the previous 20 years of his neo-classic period. The music is direct but quirky; it borrows from classic tonal harmony but also interjects surprising dissonances; it features Stravinsky's trademark off-rhythms; and it harkens back to the operas and themes of Monteverdi, Gluck and Mozart. The Serialist, or Twelve Tone Period Stravinsky first began to dabble in the twelve tone technique in smaller vocal works such as the Cantata (1952), Three Songs from Shakespeare (1953) and In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954), as if he were testing the system. He later began