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~ Boulder Bach Beat hopes to stimulate conversations about the ways Bach’s music succeeds in building bridges between populations separated by language, culture, geography and time.

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Tag Archives: Paradise Lost

William H. Scheide (1914-2014)

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Edward McCue in Bach's Successors, Bach's Works, Books, Memorials, Music Education, Other Artists

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Bach Aria Group, Bach-Jahrbuch, Bible, Brown v. Board of Education, Centurion Ministries, Chinese, Christopher Columbus, Columbia University, Cornell University, Harriet Hurd, Jesuit, John Hinsdale Scheide, Krystal Knapp, Magna Carta, Milton, NAACP, New York, oboe, organ, Paradise Lost, Philadelphia, piano, Planet Princeton, Princeton, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton University, Scheide Library, The Daily Princetonian, Westminster Choir College, William H. Scheide, Woolworth Music Center

William H. Scheide

William H. Scheide

William H. Scheide, the Princeton philanthropist and Bach enthusiast who made significant contributions to scholarship in various fields of study and curated one of the largest rare book and manuscript collections in the world, died early on 14 November 2014, a source close to the family confirmed. He was one hundred years old.

Born in Philadelphia on 6 January 1914, Bill was the only child of John Hinsdale Scheide and Harriet Hurd. His parents were passionate about music, culture, rare books and human rights. His father played the piano, and his mother, a social worker, sang. At age six, Scheide began piano lessons. He later learned to play the organ and the oboe.

A 1936 graduate of Princeton University, Scheide majored in history because there was no music department at the school at the time. He wrote music criticism for The Daily Princetonian and enjoyed attending concerts in Philadelphia and New York. His senior thesis, “Adaptations of Christianity to Chinese Culture,” explored the pervasive Christian influences Jesuit missionaries brought into Chinese culture centuries earlier.

Scheide earned his master’s degree from Columbia University in 1940. His graduate thesis explored what happened to Bach’s music in the first century after his death. 

Known as one of the most famous Bach enthusiasts in the music world, he was the first American published in the Bach-Jahrbuch, one of the world’s most respected Bach literary periodicals.

He taught at Cornell University for two years and played the oboe with a group of amateur musicians who performed an all-Bach repertory. He founded the Bach Aria Group in 1946 and served as its director until 1980. For more than three decades, the group enjoyed international acclaim for its concerts, broadcasts, and recordings. Scheide also helped fund the reconstruction of the Woolworth Music Center at Princeton University and endowed a professorship of music history at the school.

Scheide also expanded the rare book and manuscript collection begun by his grandfather and enlarged by his father. The Scheide Library is housed within Firestone Library at Princeton University. Scheide completed their collection of the first four printed editions of the Bible in 2002. Other items in the collection included musical manuscripts by Bach and other famous composers, a fourteenth-century Magna Carta, a first edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and letters by Christopher Columbus. On his ninetieth birthday, Scheide announced that he would bequeath his rare book collection to Princeton University upon his death. He donated rare books to several other academic institutions, including Princeton Theological Seminary and Westminster Choir College.

Throughout his life, Scheide used his inherited fortune to support a variety of philanthropic causes, including civil rights issues. He was the chief funder of the landmark 1954 lawsuit Brown v. Board of Education that ended public school segregation. For more than five decades, he played a crucial and invaluable part in advancing the goals of The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He was a member of the NAACP’s national committee and was a principal funder of the organization. He donated around $200,000 to hire poll-watchers on the lookout for race discrimination at the Florida polls in 2008. He was also a major supporter of Centurion Ministries, the Princeton-based nonprofit that works to free the innocent from prison.

For the last seven years, Scheide and his wife Judith hosted an annual concert that showcased famous orchestras performing rare works. The money raised through the sold-out performances benefited organizations including Westminster Choir College, the Princeton Recreation Department, the Princeton Public Library, Centurion Ministries, and Isles.

Krystal Knapp – Planet Princeton

A Futile Distinction

02 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Edward McCue in Bach's Successors, Books, Other Artists

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American Idol, ballet, Beyoncé, Chris Hanna, emotions, James Joyce, Karen Zacarías, Kindle, La traviata, literature, Moby Dick, Nicki Minaj, Norfolk, Paradise Lost, Spotify, Starbucks, Stephenie Meyer, Swan Lake, The Age of Innocence, The Book Club Play, The Da Vinci Code, The Fault in Our Stars, Twilight, Ulysses, Virginia Stage Company, Wells Theatre

Karen Zacarías

Karen Zacarías, author of The Book Club Play

In a time where I can download Ulysses and have it sent straight to the Kindle that I toss into my purse with the rest of my personal debris, the distinction between high and low culture becomes less concrete. This line is further blurred when I put on my headphones and listen to Nicki Minaj on Spotify in the Starbucks while beginning to tackle the nine hundred page monster that is James Joyce’s seminal masterpiece. The cultural gulf that we have constructed between what art is “good” for you and what popular art is for “funsies” has become intangible and irrelevant. People tend to blend their consumption of high and low art. This makes our tendency to place literary high art for the “cultural elite” on an unscalable pedestal seem out of touch.

The Book Club Play, directed by Chris Hanna and presented by the Virginia Stage Company through 16 November 2014 at the Wells Theatre in Norfolk, VA, topples this pedestal as it poses the philosophically heady question “What constitutes literature?” in the realm of everyday people. The show connects high and low art to a real community of people. Throughout the action, the characters endear themselves to the audience by inviting them into their personal struggles that are simultaneously comic and authentic. The book club, lead by the “smart . . . accomplished . . . mother bee” Ana, argues about whether it should be reading Twilight and The Da Vinci Code or Moby Dick and The Age of Innocence.

After reading Karen Zacarías’s script, I couldn’t help but think about how the distinction between high and low art creates a value system which says that certain art is for certain people. Alex, a character in the book club, advocates for Twilight, “the cultural phenomenon,” by Stephenie Meyer. Ana argues against the book club taking a turn for the popular, saying the the book club is about “real literature.” She wouldn’t be caught dead reading something so “trivial.” I caught myself agreeing with Ana; it wasn’t hard for me to picture her lines coming out of my mouth: “No, of course I don’t like that book” or “that song.” And I think we have all made similar statements that try to distance ourselves from popular culture that is somehow below us.

But how do we make that determination? And when we make those statements, what are we saying about the “other kind of people” that consume that art? I mean, it is popular for a reason: people enjoy it and are clearly getting something out of their interaction with that art. And isn’t that the point of all art, to give something to the people that enjoy it to affect them in some way? Does it matter whether the effect is intellectual and “good’ for you or is emotional and is just for “funsies?”

The Book Club Play reminds us that art and culture only truly happen when people get together as a community to exchange ideas prompted by artistic and cultural products. In other words, the value placed on art has to be based on its impact within culture. It doesn’t matter if the art is being discussed between a college professor and her students or people sitting on the train on the way to work. In this respect, the value or relevancy of a work of art, whether it be The Fault in Our Stars or Paradise Lost, is created when people connect through the work itself. As it turns out, good and fun art don’t have to be antonyms after all. Or as Alex puts it in The Book Club Play, “A truly cultured person sees La traviata, Swan Lake and American Idol; a truly cultured person listens to both Bach and Beyoncé.”

Kat Martin – AltDaily

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