Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 48
Текст из файла (страница 48)
Among the outstanding jazz musicians thereare the names of Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and EllaFitzgerald.Composers Arthur Schwartz and Richard Rodgers should also bementioned. The songs “Yellow River”, “Night and Day”, “Tea for Two”crossed national boundaries and became popular in Europe.
Scott Joplin(1868-1917) was born in freed slave musical family and managed to mixAfrican beat with classical European music. His wonderful style becameknown to both black and white musicians as Ragtime in the early 1900s.Thirty years after jazz another kind of popular music appeared – bigbeat (big rhythm).
In 1954 the disc jockey Alan Freed started tobroadcast the Black rhythm-and-blues records. He called this musicRock-and-roll after an old blues “My Baby Rocks Me in a Steady Roll”.The 50s were also marked in the USA by the enormous success of themost famous rock and roll superstar singer andguitar playerElvis Presley (1935-77). What was new in hisperformance was aggression, sexuality together withBlack blues and white romantic crooning andsentiment. Having broken all the standards, hebecame particularly admired by the young people.His songs “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Hound Dog”, “BlueSuede Shoes” and many others were recorded inmultimillion copies. To rock and roll enthusiastsPresley got to symbolize not only a rock and roll singer but also a newyouth culture. Among other things, this culture developed its own187vocabulary, ways of dressing, even hairstyle.
It even began to rejectsocially approved ideas and ways of behaving.Later rock-and-roll blended with the protest songs of the 1960s tobecome rock, the music that was harder and less escapist. Rock becameboth an American and international phenomenon. Millions of youngpeople worldwide saw it as their natural cultural language, a symbol ofopposition to officially approved ideas and standards. Rock composershave always tried to represent the authentic sound of spoken English, andhave therefore written what they have heard, rather then used standardspellings. Hard rock became bigger and louder than any beat before it,simply because it was amplified and very noisy.There are lots of superstars these days; among fifteen number one hitsthere are the ones of Madonna, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, CindyBirdsong.
In the 1970-80s Michael Jackson made his fantastic career. Inaddition to live performances he produced a lot of records, CDs and videoclips. His particular ability to combine extraordinary gracious movementswith singing brought him fame all the world round.Some young musicians combined their vocal and composer masterieswith their dramatic skills (so-called “performance”). The talented singerDiamond Galas (1955) using a very gloomy vampire stage image and lotsof technicaland light effects createdunsurpassed emotionalperformances full of energy and expressions. Joan La Barbara (1947)possessing a wonderful vocal technique brilliantly experiments withmodern compositions written by her husband Morton Subotnic andchamber music easily passing from charming whispering and thrillingmoans to anxious beast cries.
Black composer Anthony Davis (1951)improvises with modernism, jazz and Indian rhythms.Besides folk and pop music so-called “serious” music is also veryfamous. The greatest opera house “Metropolitan Opera” is located inNew York, but there plenty of other ones. Now live performances ofclassical music are held in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, SanFrancisco and other cities, many of which are famous for their orchestrasand conductors. There are over 1500 orchestras throughout the country,many of which can be termed “major” or world-class.
The symphony“The Last Alice” (1976) by David Del-Tredichy written on Luis Carol’s“Alice in Wonderland” is successfully played by Chicago symphonicorchestra.188School and university ensembles and orchestras play a very importantrole throughout the country to bring up the level of the culture of youngpeople. There are hundreds of cities, state and nationwide musiccompetitions. In addition, the universities provide cultural offerings inmany areas of the nation, especially in smaller places, which wouldotherwise find it difficult to support a major symphony or concert.In the 20th century besides George Gershwin and Aaron Copland thereappeared the number of very talented composers: Leonard Bernstein(1919-80) who wrote two ballets, an opera and the music for “West SideStory”, Philip Glass and Steven Polus whose operas were staged in NewYork and Minneapolis (state Minnesota). Some modern composerexperimented with moderns forms.
Composition “Keys to the City”devoted to the Centenary of the Brooklyn Bridge is a very complexweave of romantic concert traditions with the city noises and folkloreelements and jazz.One of the very popular genres in the USA “musicals” has trulyAmerican origin. The first popular musical was “Oklahoma», performedin the 1940s. Since “Oklahoma” many musical plays have appeared onthe American stage. Among the most noteworthy musicals there were“On your Toes”(1966) with original George Balanchire choreography,“Funny Face”, “My One and Only” based on Gershwin’s shows.
Verysuccessful musicals were also “My Fair Lady”, the musical version of B.Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” and “West Side Story”, portraying tense andhostile relationships between the Puerto Ricans and native New Yorkers.The musicals» Cats”, “A Chorus Line» and “Hair” are ones of thelongest-running shows on Broadway.Closely related to the development of American music in the early 20thcentury was the emergence of a new, and distinctively American, art form- modern dance. American choreographers searched for new methods ofexpression.
Merce Cunningham (1919) introduced improvisationmovemens into performances. Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) incorporatedAfrican dance elements and black music into his works. Among the earlyinnovators was Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), who stressed pure,unstructured movement in classical ballet.The first American ballet troupes were founded in the 1930s, whendancers and choreographers teamed up with visionary lovers of balletsuch as Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) who invited Russianchoreographer George Balanchine (1904-1983) to the United States in1891933.
The two established the School of American Ballet, which becamethe New York City Ballet in 1948. Ballet manager and publicity agentRichard Pleasant (1909-1961) founded America’s second leading balletorganization, American Ballet Theatre, with dancer and patron LuciaChase (1907-1986) in 1940.While Pleasant included Russian classics in his repertoires, G.Balanchine announced that his American company would mix classicalidioms with the new forms.
Since then, the American ballet scene hasbeen a mixture of classical revivals and very original works,choreographed by such talented former dancers as Jerome Robbins,Robert Jeffrey, Eliot Feld, Arthur Mitchell, and Russian dancer MikhailBaryshnikovNew World, New Architecture, New Pop Culture.American architects of the later 19th – 20th centuries found themselvesin a world being reshaped by science, industry, and speed. The needs of anew American society pressed them, while steel, reinforced concrete, castiron and electricity were among the many new technical means at theirdisposal. The 20th-century architecture incorporated engineering andmodern stylistic elements and works such as the Brooklyn Bridge byJohn and Washington Roebling (1869-83) number among the mostimpressive of all American achievements.For many people the symbol of America is New York Manhattanskyline. The origin of skyscrapers can be traced back more than ahundred years to the American Midwest and has become the result of aneed for more working and living space in places where the cost of landis very high.
During the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20ththe great number of high, narrow buildings began to rise not only in NewYork, but also in the center of Chicago and some other American cities.Each skyscraper was built around a framework of steel beams, whichcarried the weight of the building.
The walls of the early skyscraperswere often made of stone, but later of glass and metal. They give theimages not only of modernity and technical progress but also of visualexpression to the impact of the United States on the world. Among theworld’s tallest buildings there are the Chrysler Building (1930) and theEmpire State Building (1931).Still today, despite the loss of the WorldTrade Center towers, no city in the world has more completed individualfree-standing buildings over 500 ft.(152 m.) than New York City with its184 so-called skyscrapers.190From the 1930s onwards, skyscrapers also began to appear in LatinAmerica and Asia. Now Hong Kong has come in with the most in theworld.
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