Dorf tries, unsuccesfully in my opinion, to argue that Socrate by Erik Satie has themes of gayness. I do not find his argument to be convincing in the slightest. The pieces was written for the Princess de Polignac, who was openly gay in a time when that was very much frowned upon. However, I don’t […]
When I signed up for this class, I was excited. Music and history are the two academic subjects that interest me the most, and the classes I like most are the classes that look at the intersection of those two disciplines. It is impossible to understand music without understanding its historical context. Tensions between France […]
Some of the questions that provoke the deepest discussions are the questions that seem the simplest on the surface. One of these questions is as follows: What is French music? What does it mean for music to be French? Here is where I will invoke a personal analogy. I am an Irish citizen, since my […]
One aspect of my research that I have found very troubling is organizing it. I have never been very good at organizing things, and it is especially hard when it is all digital without any physical folders to put things in. The upside of working digitally is that it is much harder for me to […]
Negrophilia, which literally means “love of blacks”, was a major artistic and cultural movement in 1920s Paris. White Parisians became very fascinated with black culture, both native African and black American.1 The primary reason that this movement arose was the large influx of black soldiers into France during World War I. In the late 1800s, […]
AUTHOR (Who is writing? Based on the writer’s education, credentials, and/or experience, how credible is the information or argument? Given the writer’s background, what are his/her potential biases or preferences?): Wayne D Shirley, a manuscript librarian in the Library of Congress music department DISCOURSE ( How does this article respond to scholarly problems or participate […]