Aesthetics and Opera Flashcards
What does Dryden say about his text’s relationship to the music in the dedication to ‘King Arthur’?
‘my Art on this occasion, ought to be subservient to [Purcell’s]’
What does Dryden say about the conflict between poetry and music in the dedication to ‘King Arthur’?
‘the Numbers of Poetry and Vocal Music are sometimes so contrary, that in many places I have been obliged to cramp my verses and make them rugged to the reader, that they may be harmonious to the listener’
What do the Saxons use in their rituals in ‘King Arthur’?
‘Sacred Runic Rhymes’
When was Dryden’s ‘King Arthur’ published?
1691
When was Dryden’s ‘Albion and Albanius’ written?
1680, music written and performed in 1685
When was Thomas Lediard’s ‘Britannia: An English Opera’ published?
1732
What two pseudo-musical characters appear in Lediard’s ‘Britannia’?
‘Discord’ and ‘concord’
What does the front-matter of ‘Britannia’ boast?
‘Illuminated and adorned with a great number of elements… in a manner entirely new’
What does Andrew Walkling term the nature of English opera in this period?
‘polyglot nature of the form’
How does the prologue to ‘Alfred: A Mask’ begin?
‘In arms renown’d, for arts of peace ador’d, / ALFRED, the nation’s father more than lord, / A British author has presum’d to draw’
What does Alfred say about the role of the arts in nationalism?
‘to raise anew our English name, / By peaceful arts that grace the land they bless’
What does Mercury refer to Augusta (London) as in ‘Albion and Albanius’?
‘glorious Fabrick’
What does the prologue, ‘To the Opera’, in ‘Albion and Albanius’ say about genre with regard to the public?
‘Satyre was once your Physick, […] We bring you change, to humour your Disease’
Where does Addison find himself in his dream vision?
the ‘region of false Wit’
What does Addison hear in his dream?
‘The Fountains bubbled in Opera tune’
When did Joseph Addison publish his ‘Spectator’ on false wit and opera?
1711
When did Joseph Addison’s failed opera ‘Rosamand’ premiere?
1707
How does Addison describe the ‘Heathen Temple’ of ‘Dullness’?
‘a Monstrous Fabrick built after the Gothick manner, and covered with innumerable Devices in that barbarous kind of Sculpture.’
What do the English have a taste for, according to Addison?
‘Epigrams, turns of wit, and forced conceit’
What has Addison been trying to do with regard to taste in his articles?
‘to banish this Gothic Taste which has taken Possession among us’
When was Pope’s ‘Epistle to the Earl of Burlington’ published?
1731
What is Pope’s advice to architects?
‘Let nature never be forgot. / Consult the Genius of the Place’
What does Pope miss about ancient architecture?
when ‘pompous Buildings once were things of use’
What does Pope say about attending to constituent aesthetic components?
‘Parts answ’ring Parts, shall slide into a Whole’
When was Swift’s ‘Proposal for correcting the English tongue’ published?
1713
What does Swift say about a changing language?
‘it is better a Language should not be wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually changing’
How does Swift characterise our habit of shortening words?
‘a Tendency to relapse into the Barbarity of those Northern Nations from whom we are descended’
What does Joseph Addison say about Italian Opera’s effects on English identity in a Spectator issue from 1711?
Viewers of opera ‘sit together like an Audience of Foreigners in their own Country’
How does Joseph Addison describe the collapse of British stage culture, and the hope for a new one, in the Spectator (1711)?
‘When a Royal Palace is burnt to the Ground, every Man is at Liberty to present his Plan for a new one’
How does Thomas Shadwell refer to the Reformation in his ‘Congratulatory Poem’ to William of Orange (1689)?
The Catholic Church’s ‘building made of Stubble and of Hay, / Was by our Wise Reformers swept away’
How does Shadwell refer to the rise of Catholicism in England under Charles II and James?
‘down in pieces dash’d, the Noble Structure lay.’
How is the Glorious Revolution described by Shadwell?
‘To purge itself that it may clean become, / The fermentation soon throws off the Scum.’
When was Thomas Shadwell made poet laureate?
1689
What does Diane Dugaw say about Dryden’s use of multi-media in his later works?
They ‘insist upon suprarational responses that lift characters in the works and, if successful, audiences of the works to a spiritual dimension.’
When did Richard Blackmore publish his ‘Advice to the Poets’?
1706
When was Richard Blackmore’s ‘King Arthur’ epic poem published?
1697
What does Blackmore proclaim in his preface to ‘King Arthur’?
‘I had not my Eye on any other Model’
What does Richard Blackmore ask in his ‘Advice to the Poets’?
‘The Pagan gods might grace a Pagan scheme, / But will they too adorn a Christian theme?’
What does Dustin Griffin say about 18th century nationalism in England?
It was not simply defined by the ‘presence of a threatening ‘other’ across the Channel’, but was rooted in its ‘inescapable inheritance’
What does Pope say in his ‘Essay on Criticism’ that links the rules of art to national constitution?
‘(As Kings dispense with Laws themselves have made)’
What does Michael Burden suggest about English opera and tradition?
Its lack of a consistent style and governing tradition ‘IS the national tradition’
