Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889
Related: world fair - Debussy hears Javanese gamelan - Paris - 1889
Eiffel Tower (1889) - Gustave Eiffel
More than a million people took the elevator to the top of the Eiffel tower when it was opened at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The Eiffel Tower, the tallest building in the world at the time, was France's answer to the Crystal Palace of the 1851 Great Exhibition.
Exposition Universelle, Paris
The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a World's Fair held in Paris, France from May 5, to October 31, 1889.
It was held during the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, an event traditionally considered as the symbol for the beginning of the French Revolution.
The main symbol of the Fair was the Eiffel Tower, which was completed in 1889, and served as the entrance arch to the Fair.
The Exposition covered a total area of 0.96 km², including the Champs de Mars, the Trocadéro, the quai d'Orsay, a part a the Seine and the Invalides esplanade. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_Universelle_%281889%29 [Dec 2004]
Debussy hears Javanese gamelan
At the point when Debussy heard Javanese gamelan performed at the Paris Exposition of 1889, the acoustic world was expanding as dramatically as global awareness. These expositions were celebrations of European colonialism, yet the sudden impact of these colonial "commodities" - Javanese and Vietnamese musicians or West African pot makers -- stimulated a kind of surrealism of possible worlds in the minds of many musicians. As the world changed, rapidly and irrevocably, whether by travel, technological growth, the advent of modern warfare or instant communications, so these surrealistic soundworks depicted a mutating environment of exotic signals and strange noise. Musicians heard and organised sound with a revived sensitivity to its potential. Increasingly easy access to previously unknown musical cultures and environmental sounds threw assumptions of European musical superiority into doubt; theories of harmony and rhythm were eroded and enriched by these influences. Sound was treated as an ocean in which we swim, and in that sense, music has helped to prepare us for the information ocean of the next century. -- David Toop in Ocean of Sound
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