1. Readings for Next Week Readings can be found online at:
Tuesday’s Class:
Sharon Hays, “Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture,” [Whole Article]
William Sewell, “A theory of structure: duality, agency and transformation,” pp. 1-21
Thursday’s Class
Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies” [Whole Article]
Eliasoph and Lichtermann, “Culture in Interaction” pp ,

2. The Sociology of Culture
Art and Society: Reception

3. Some Definitions for Next Week
Agency = The power of individual people to make choices on their own.
Structure = The power of human relationships to determine the life of individuals.
Culture = The mental or cognitive components of individuals and structures.

4. The Sistine Chapel (Pre-Restoration)

5. The Sistine Chapel (Post-Restoration)

6. Ancient Roman Sculpture Revised

7. Arvo Pärt The Paradoxes:
Pärt’s music is avant-garde, but unlike other avant-garde composers, he is well liked by the general public

8. Critics on Pärt …the sound of angels' wings…
…He enchants by the spirit…
His impulse toward simplicity and toward a music which expressed his deep spirituality guided him in developing a powerfully affecting style of composition

9. Critics on Other “New Music”
… didactic … thinly inspired …
… [a] postmodern age of triviality and camp …
… serialism and chance music had something else in common: neither system "worked“…

10. Underlying Scheme for Pärt’s Magnificat

11. Pierre Boulez’s Structures 1A

12. Arvo Pärt’s Magnificat

13. Arvo Pärt The Paradoxes:
Pärt’s music is avant-garde, but unlike other avant-garde composers, he is well liked by the general public
He writes music that is studied in universities as “art” music, but at the same time, he has made relatively large profits selling his CDs.

14. Pärt’s Credentials “High” Art: “Pop” Art:
4 Honorary Degrees from Universities
3 Honorary Memberships in Ceremonial Academies
Numerous Composition Awards in Multiple Countries
“Pop” Art:
Nominated 5 Times for a “Grammy” Award
Soundtrack to Many Films (including Fahrenheit 9/11, and 2003 Oscar Winner Les Invasions Barbares)
One Album (De Profundis) Sold 80,000 Copies Worldwide

15. Long-Term vs. Short-Term Production
Comparative sales growth of three different books published by Editions de Minuit

16. Pärt’s Triodion

17. Morton Feldman’s Intersection 3

18. Pärt as “Estonian Monk”

19. Music Critic on Pärt and Estonia
“The sun shines just as brightly and just as often in Estonia as anywhere else, but such is the power of musical impressions that many in the West will imagine it a monochrome land of somber people praying in penitentially drafty churches.”

20. Interview with Pärt
I.R.: What do you think has changed in your creative process? Say, technically as well as in content?
A.P.: (makes some obscure movements in the air with his hand) Well, that way...
E.P.: What is "that way"? But maybe you don't start writing at all but dancing instead. Tell me "that way" is? What sound it is?
A.P.: What sound?
E.P.: What colour does this sound have?
A.P.: Blue.
E.P.: Good, we reached somewhere at last. Does it fly or jump or walk?
A.P.: The sun is shining there, but we don't see the sun.

21. Pärt and Conservatism
“Not a day goes by, it begins to seem, not a blessed day, without a new recording of new music steeped in devotion.”
-- Matthew Gurewitsch, “A Search for Spirituality Is the Stuff of New Disks,” New York Times (1999).