Waltz

The waltz (from German: "Walzer") is a smooth, progressive ballroom and folk dance, normally in  triple  time, performed primarily in closed position.

Introduction and acceptance

There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance—a waltz—from the 16th century, including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim. The French philosopher Montaigne wrote of a dance he saw in 1580 in Augsburg, where the dancers held each other so closely that their faces touched. Kunz Haas (of approximately the same period) wrote, "Now they are dancing the godless Weller or Spinner." "The vigorous peasant dancer, following an instinctive knowledge of the weight of fall, utilizes his surplus energy to press all his strength into the proper beat of the measure, thus intensifying his personal enjoyment in dancing".

The peasants of Bavaria, Tyrol, and Styria began dancing a dance called Walzer, a dance for couples, around 1750. The Ländler, also known as the Schleifer, a country dance in 3
4 time, was popular in Bohemia, Austria, and Bavaria, and spread from the countryside to the suburbs of the city. While the eighteenth century upper classes continued to dance the minuet, bored noblemen slipped away to the balls of their servants.

XO (Elliott Smith album)

XO is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. It was recorded from 1997 to 1998 and released on August 25, 1998 by record label DreamWorks; Smith's first solo album on a major record label. Two singles, "Waltz #2 (XO)" and "Baby Britain", were released.

Content

An early working title for the album was Grand Mal.

The title of the first track, "Sweet Adeline", was inspired by Smith’s recollections of his grandmother singing in her glee club, Sweet Adelines International. "Amity" is believed to be named after a friend who can be seen in photographs from Smith's 1997 tour.

Release

XO was released by DreamWorks Records on August 25, 1998. It was Smith's first solo record on a major record label, though he had previously released music on a major label with his band Heatmiser final album, Mic City Sons (1996).

Singles released from the album were "Waltz #2 (XO)" in the same year and "Baby Britain" the following year.

Reception

XO was well received by critics upon its release. Pitchfork wrote, "Smith's songwriting continues to improve, as each of [the album's] fourteen tracks displays his inarguable mastery of the pop song structure more clearly than ever." The album placed at number 5 on the 1998 end-of-year Pazz & Jop poll.

Waltz (music)

A waltz (German: Walzer; French: Valse, Italian: Valzer, Spanish: Vals, Polish: Walc), probably deriving from German Ländler, is dance music in triple meter, often written in time signature 3/4. A waltz typically sounds one chord per measure, and the accompaniment style particularly associated with the waltz is (as seen in the example to the right) to play the root of the chord on the first beat, the upper notes on the second and third beats.

History

The name "waltz" comes from the German verb walzen, in turn taken from the Latin verb volvere, which describes the turning or rotating movement characteristic of the dance. Although French writers have attempted to connect the waltz to the 16th century volta, firm evidence connecting this Italian form to the earliest occurrence in the mid‑18th century of walzen to describe dancing is lacking (Lamb 2001).

Classical composers traditionally supplied music for dancing when required, and Franz Schubert's waltzes (including the Valses Sentimentales and Valses Nobles) were written for household dancing, without any pretense at being art music. However, Frédéric Chopin's surviving 18 waltzes (five he wrote as a child), along with his mazurkas and polonaises, were clearly not intended for dance. They marked the adoption of the waltz and other dance forms as serious composition genres. Other notable contributions to the waltz genre in classical music include 16 by Johannes Brahms (originally for piano duet), and Maurice Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales for piano and La valse for orchestra (Lamb 2001).

Hem

A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded narrowly and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric.

Methods

There are many different styles of hems of varying complexities. The most common hem folds up a cut edge, folds it up again, and then sews it down. The style of hemming thus completely encloses the cut edge in cloth, so that it cannot unravel. Other hem styles use fewer folds. One of the simplest hems encloses the edge of cloth with a stitch without any folds at all, using a method called an overcast stitch, although an overcast stitch may be used to finish a folded "plain hem" as well.

There are even hems that do not call for sewing, instead using iron-on materials, netting, plastic clips, or other fasteners. These threadless hems are not common, and are often used only on a temporary basis.

The hem may be sewn down with a line of invisible stitches or blind stitch, or sewn down by a sewing machine. The term hem is also extended to other cloth treatments that prevent unraveling. Hems can be serged (see serger), hand rolled and then sewn down with tiny stitches (still seen as a high-class finish to handkerchiefs), pinked with pinking shears, piped, covered with binding (this is known as a Hong Kong finish), or made with many other inventive treatments.

Hem (disambiguation)

A hem is a sown edge of cloth. Hem may also refer to:

Creatures

People

Places

Codes

Initialisms

HEM can stand for:

Hem (knitting)

A hem in knitting is the edge of a piece of knitted fabric that is parallel to the rows of stitches, as compared to a selvage, which is perpendicular to the hem and rows of stitches. Hems can be made in several ways.

The simplest approach is to bind off, possibly with decorative elements such as picots. This approach adds no extra thickness at the hemline (which is sometimes desirable).

Another approach amounts to a tuck: the fabric is folded over and the stitches are knit together pairwise with the stitches of a previous row. In this approach, the fabric is doubled along the hemline.

References

See also