TPO 12 Lecture 3 Music history
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a music history class. The professor has been
discussing Opera.
Professor
The word opera means work, actually it means works. It’s the plural of the word
opus from the Latin. And in Italian it refers in general to works of art. Opera
Lyric or lyric of opera refers to what we think of as opera, the musical drama.
Opera was commonplace in Italy for almost thousands of years before it
became commercial as a venture. And during those years, several things
happened primarily linguistic or thematic and both involving secularization.
Musical drama started in the churches. It was an educational tool. It was used
primarily as a vehicle for teaching religion and was generally presented in the
Latin, the language of the Christian Church which had considerable influence
in Italy at that time. But the language of everyday life was evolving in Europe
and at a certain point in the middle ages it was really only merchants, Socratics
and clergy who can deal with Latin. The vast majority of the population used
their own regional vernacular in all aspects to their lives. And so in what is now
Italy, operas quit being presented in Latin and started being presented in
Italian. And once that happened, the themes of the opera presentations also
started to change. And musical drama moved from the church to the plaza right
outside the church. And the themes again, the themes changed. And opera
was no longer about teaching religion as it was about satire and about
expressing the ideas of society your government without committing yourself
to writing and risking imprisonment or persecution, or what have you.
Opera, as we think of it, is of course a rather restive form. It is the melodious
drama of ancient Greek theater, the term ‘melodious drama’ being shortened
eventually to ‘melodrama’ because operas frequently are melodramatic, not to
say unrealistic. And the group that put the first operas together that we have
today even, were, they were…well…it was a group of men that included Gallo
Leo’s father Venchesil, and they met in Florence he and a group of friends of
the counts of the party and they formed what is called the Camarola Dayir
Bardy. And they took classical theater and reproduced it in the Renaissance’s
time. This…uh…this produced some of the operas that we have today.
Now what happened in the following centuries is very simple. Opera originated
in Italy but was not confined to Italy any more than the Italians were. And so as
the Italians migrated across Europe, they carried theater with them and opera
specifically because it was an Italian form. What happened is that the major
divide in opera that endures today took place. The French said opera
auto-reflect the rhythm and Kevin of dramatic literature, bearing in mind that
we are talking about the golden age in French literature. And so the music was
secondary, if you will, to the dramatic Kevin of language, to the way the rhythm
of language was used to express feeling and used to add drama and of course
as a result instead of arias or solos, which would come to dominated Italian
opera. The French relied on that what is the Italian called French Word 1 or
French Word 2 in English. The lyrics were spoken, frequently to the
accomp**nt of a harpsichord.
The French said you really cannot talk about real people who lived in opera
and they relied on mythology to give them their characters and their plots,
mythology, the past old traditions, the novels of chivalry or the epics of chivalry
out of the middle Ages. The Italian said, no this is a great historical tool and
what a better way to educate the public about Neo or Attalla or any number of
people than to put them into a play they can see and listen to. The English
appropriated opera after the French. Opera came late to England because all
theaters, public theaters were closed, of course, during their civil war. And it
wasn’t until the restoration in 1660 that public theaters again opened and
opera took off. The English made a major adjustment to opera and exported
what they had done to opera back to Italy. So that you have this circle of
musical influences, the Italians invented opera, the French adapted it, the
English adopted it, and the Italians took it back.
It came to America late and was considered to elites for the general public. But
Broadway musicals fulfilled a similar function for a great long while. George
Champon wrote about opera, “If an extraterrestrial being or two appear before
us and say, what is your society like, what is this Earth thing all about, you
could do worse than take that creature to an opera.” Because opera does, after
all, begin with a man and a woman and any motion.
TPO12 Lecture 4 Environmental science
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in an environmental science class.
Professor
All right folks, let’s continue our discussion of alternative energy sources and
move on to what’s probably the most well-known alternative energy source---
solar energy. The sun basically provides earth with virtually unlimited source of
energy every day, but the problem has always been how do we tap this source
of energy. Can anyone think of why it’s so difficult to make use of solar energy?
Student A
Because it is hard to gather it?
Professor
That’s exactly it. Solar energy is everywhere, but it’s also quite diffused. And
the thing is the dream of solar energy is not a new one. Humanity has been
trying to use the sun’s light as a reliable source of energy for centuries. And
around the beginning of the 20th century there were actually some primitive
solar water heaters on the consumer market. But they didn’t sell very well. Any
of you wanna guess why?
Student A
Well, there were other energy choices like oil and natural gas, right?
Professor
Yeah. And for better or for worse, we chose to go down that path as a society.
When you consider economic factors, it’s easy to see why. But then in the
1970s, there was an interest in solar energy again. Why do you think that
happened?
Student B
Because oil and natural gas were...err...became scarce?
Professor
Well, not exactly. The amount of oil and natural gas in the earth was still
plentiful, but there were other reasons. It’s a political thing really and I’m gonna
get into that now. So what happened in the 1970s was oil and natural gas
became very expensive very quickly, and that spurred people to start looking
into alternative forms of energy, solar energy probably being the most popular.
But then in the 80s, this trend reversed itself when the price of oil and natural
gas went down.
Alright let’s shift our focus now to some of the technologies that have been
invented to overcome the problem of gathering diffused solar energy. The most
basic solution is simply to carefully place windows in a building, so the sun
shines into the building and then it’s absorbed and converted into heat. Can
anyone think of where this is most commonly used?
Student A
Greenhouses.
Professor
Yep, greenhouses where plants are kept warm and provided with sunlight
because the walls of the building are made entirely of glass. But we do also
have more complex systems that are used for space heating and they fall into
two categories, passive and active heating systems.
Passive systems take advantage of the location or design of a house. For
example, solar energy is gathered through large glass panels facing the sun.
The heat is then stored in water-filled tanks or concrete. No mechanical
devices are used in passive heating systems. They operate with little or no
mechanical assistance.
With active systems, on the other hand, you collect the solar energy at one
location, and then you use pumps and fans to move heat from the collectors
through a plumbing system to a tank, where can be used to heat a home or to
just provide hot water.
Student B
Excuse me professor, but I’ve got to ask, how can solar energy work at night or
on cloudy days?
Professor
That’s...Well...that is a really good question. As a matter of facts, science is still
working on it, trying to find ways of enhancing energy storage techniques so
that coming of night or cloudy days really wouldn’t matter. That is the biggest
drawback to solar energy. The problem of what do you do in cases where the
sun’s light is weak or virtually non-present. So the storage of solar energy, lots
of solar energy, is a really important aspect.
Student A
Does that mean that solar energy can only be used on a small scale, like
heating a home?
Professor
Well actually, there have been some attempts to build solar energy power
plants. The world’s largest solar plant is located in Cremer Junction California.
It can generate 194 megawatts of electric power, but that’s just a drop in the
bucket. Right now the utility companies are interested in increasing the
capacity of Cremer Junction Plant, but only time will tell if it will ever develop
into a major source of power for that region, considering the economic and
political factors involved.
