Performing Arts - CLEP Humanities

Orson Welles' Citizen Kane pioneered a variety of filmmaking approaches and techniques, marking it out as a landmark of cinema. In particular, Welles used overlapping dialogue, with characters talking over each other; a soundtrack of incidental and background noises; deep focus shots that placed entire shots of different depths completely into focus; and a story that unfolded in a nonlinear fashion, by using flashbacks, unreliable narrators, and contradictory facts.

Silent films, by their very nature, were unable to use dialogue or sound to convey information to the audience. While many actors were able to provide lots of content through pantomime and action, crucial elements would still be missed. Therefore, intertitles, screen shots of writing that gave dialogue or information, were used to flesh out the stories of silent films.

Johann Sebastian Bach was the most significant and well-known composer of the Baroque Era, which stretched from 1600 to 1750. Bach's signature elements—strong counterpoint, involved harmonies, and complex melodies—were extremely typical of Baroque music in general.

"Baroque" generally refers to the symphonic and orchestral music composed between 1600 and 1750, which now forms a large core of the classical music canon. Baroque music is defined stylistically by heavy ornamentation, intense orchestrations, and a focus on tonality, harmony, and counterpoint. Some of the significant composers of the Baroque period are Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Pachelbel, and Henry Purcell.

The Brandenburg Concertos are widely considered the pinnacle of Johann Sebastian Bach's musical compositions. Presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721, the six concertos are the perfect exemplar of Baroque composition, featuring layered harmonies of various instruments in an ornate contrapuntal orchestration. The Concertos most likely took years to compose, and were only fully completed in 1721.

Johann Sebastian Bach is the composer most closely associated with the Baroque period. Bach's music, with its complex counterpoint melodies and harmonies, multilayered instrumentation, and formal structure, stands as representative of the entire era. Bach's music was seen as a high point of the Baroque era, and my of his works inspired developments away from Baroque music.

The guitar's rise in popularity took place in the late nineteenth century in Europe and America, largely thanks to a move away from large classical ensembles and more towards parlor music. The guitar's ability to play chords easily and accompany a singer made it become immensely popular, despite its lack of use in classical orchestras.

The guitar, developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was structured to be an accompanying instrument instead of a lead instrument. As such, it was created to play chords easily, and was given six strings in closer tuning than the four-stringed violin or cello. Despite its humble origins, the guitar's functionality allowed it to become the main lead instrument in popular music.

A contemporary rival of Mozart, Salieri staged 37 operas in his lifetime, but did not write the Requiem in D Minor. Bach and Handel were a German composers in the early and mid-18th century. Beethoven died in the mid-19th century, and is known for works such as the Moonlight Sonata.

Alvin Ailey was significant in the history of dance as being one of the first prominent African-American choreographers to lead his own dance company. Ailey significantly contributed to dance by fusing the then-current forms of Modern dance in the 1950s with African-American vernacular dancing. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater gained the nickname "The Cultural Ambassador to the World."

Merce Cunningham followed in the footsteps of pioneering modern dance choreographers like Martha Graham and Isadora Duncan, pushing the boundaries of movement and form. One of his particular contributions was by constantly producing work by collaborating with various other artists. His most famous and long lasting partnership was with the avant-garde composer John Cage.

In 1927, Al Jolson, a notable vaudeville star, starred in a semi-autobiographical film called The Jazz Singer, which was most notable for Jolson turning to the camera and telling the audience, "You ain't heard nothing yet!" This was the first recorded sound to feature prominently in a movie. The Jazz Singer ushered in the era of talkies, and largely spelled the doom of silent films.

The Lumière brothers were Frenchmen who ran a family photographic business in Lyon, France at the end of the nineteenth century. They were some of the first people to figure out how to connect individual images to create moving pictures, and they essentially invented the modern process of filmmaking. Their first film, from 1895, was a forty-five-second reel depicting workers leaving their factory.

Walt Disney's 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was considered a folly while Disney was making it, as no one had made a full length animated feature before. Financed entirely on his own, and with considerable debt accrued, Disney's film was released under great suspicion. The film ended up being a success, with the Academy Awards giving seven small special Oscars to Disney for his film.

The Japanes director Akira Kurosawa became internationally famous for his samurai films, which were sweeping epics that reflected a wide range of philosophical issues. Many of his films were remade around the world in different genres. Most notable among these was the 1960 Western film The Magnificent Seven, by John Sturges, which followed a similar story to that of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

Gregorian chant is the style of music that developed throughout the Middle Ages, having various sources and styles. It was an ecclesiastical form of music, meaning that it was a "church" music. In particular, it was a kind of liturgical music, used in the various forms of public worship undertaken by the Latin Roman Catholic Church. Its melodies were based on the texts of the Mass, the Divine Office, and other liturgical ceremonies. Many of these texts were biblical, though adaptations from other sources are also found in many hymns and antiphons throughout the Middle Ages.

Strictly speaking, Gregorian Chant is a phenomenon of the Christian West. It was the liturgical music of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, which dominated much (though not all) of Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages. While there were other forms of liturgical worship throughout this period, the Latin Rite was the "location" for the development of the Gregorian Chant repertoire. Its texts were taken from various parts of the liturgy, drawing on biblical sources as well as more original compositions by hymn and antiphon writers.

The pipes, trumpet, and harpsichord are not common Medieval instruments. Though is was an ancient stringed instrument also common in Medieval times, the lute was not associated with Apollo.

Frederic Chopin was a Polish-born composer of the Romantic Era, who was a child prodigy on the piano and began composing in his teens. As an adult, he moved to Paris, France, and became a well known composer of works for the piano, both solo and as a featured member of an ensemble.