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Polish Marian devotion has got a long and plentiful tradition, witnessed by numerous works of art dedicated to Mary, Mother of God. Many contemporary Polish composers are willingly reaching for Marian theme, among whom figure of Andrzej Nikodemowicz excels. In his works pieces devoted to Mary form a significant contribution, being nearly half of his religious works. As well as his whole oeuvre, his Marian works are diversified in terms of style and structure. However, they invariably represent a testimony of both profound faith (which has survived political persecutions) and close relation between A. Nikodemowicz and Mary the Mother.The following article includes general characteristic of the Marian works of Andrzej Nikodemowicz, taking cognisance of the background of the work as well as the sources of his inspiration. In order to show exemplary solutions applied by the composer, the author included a short but detailed analysis of three selected pieces from different periods of his work.
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This article deals with analysis of original aspects of bandura art research of Ukraine and Ukrainian diaspora. Bandura art is being considered in the context of problem of national cultural heritage preservation. The components of spiritual and material culture in bandura art are being defined. Major source groups in bandura art research of Ukraine and Ukrainian diaspora are being characterized. Priorities of modern bandura art studies are being defined.
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The she-wolf with the twins, Romulus and Remus, was identified as a symbol of Rome by both the Romans themselves and nations under the Roman rule. In this essay I will discuss the Lupa Romana in Roman provincial art. I will present various visual representations of the she-wolf both in the public use and in objects related to private life, and analyze the she-wolf’s symbolic meaning.The Lupa Romana was an iconic scene that was not used randomly in provincial art. It represented in the first place the idea of romanitas, being Roman. In some cases the use of the symbol could have been in consequence of instructions from Rome itself or from provincial authorities that depended on Rome, but in most cases the motif was used by the inhabitants of the provinces themselves. It can be seen as an expression of loyalty to Rome and the emperor, but at the same time the message could have been directed to other members of the community, too. As romanitas was associated with higher social status, the she-wolf motif in the decoration of one’s house or gravestone could be seen as self-aggrandizement.
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Béla Balázs, the librettist of Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Wooden Prince, wrote many remarks about Bartók in his recollections throughout his life, and their manuscripts are preserved in Budapest, in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and National Széchényi Library. Some parts of these texts, however, still remain unpublished. Even though his reminiscence tends to exaggerate their friendship, which in fact ended in their earliest period in Budapest, examination of the sources provides us with a new understanding of the relationship between the librettist and the composer. Therefore, this paper introduces the documents written by Balázs, gives a selective overview of their friendship, and examines how the image of Bartók changed in Balázs’s mind over time.
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While concentrating on two cases: Ribioa/Ribice and Malancrav/Almakerék, Sorin Dumitrescu (himself a painter) offers an overview of Hungarian–Romanian relations, not only from the artistic point of view, but also in the broader cultural and even political sense – a study on the conditions of vassality, so to say. He suggests that the mixture of genres runs the risk of making art intolerably tasteless.
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After briefly summarizing the historical circumstances of its construction, Szilveszter Terdik compiles a kind of inventory of the religious decoration of the cathedral. He demonstrates the effort to maintain loyalty to the main principal of the byzantine art, while describing certain inflexions that show the intention to get closer to Rome. Moreover, these two tendencies were sustained by two different artists.
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The tradition of European “classical music” has long evoked the exotic, and two of the most prominent exotic referents in that tradition are the Middle East, first and foremost the Turk, and the Hungarian Gypsy, raising the questions of how these “exotic” traditions are related, and what their comparison might tell us about the idea of musical exoticism more broadly. In this essay, I briefly survey the “Turkish style” and its use in Classical-period opera; discuss its replacement by Hungarian-Gypsy style in the nineteenth century; and finally examine the interesting juxtaposition of Turkish and Hungarian-Gypsy topics in two fin-de-siècle Central European operettas, Der Zigeunerbaron by the Austrian Johann Strauss Jr. and Gül baba by the Hungarian Jenõ Huszka. An examination of these works and their reception reveals fissures between the Viennese and Budapest versions of operettas featuring “exotic” topics and characters, and between the operetta industries in the two cities. These details offer a fascinating look at the dividing line between exoticism and auto-exoticism and at the significance of references to Turkish and Hungarian-Gypsy topics in the Central European cultural climate of this period – in short, a reconsideration of what it means to be Hungarian, and for whom.
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