bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Study Session 38theorizing Mixed Media
Authors: Cook Nicholas
Published: November 2023

The starting-point of this session was the current state of research across a range of mixed media extending from opera and song to dance, film, and music video. In each of these fields scholars study how media work together, but there is little communication between them. There are no widely accepted theoretical models or even terminologies for intermedia relations that translate easily from one genre to another. (Traditional film critics’ definitions of parallelism and counterpoint, for instance, seem too simple to many writers on opera and song, as well as on film and other audio-visual media.) The session drew together scholars working across a range of genres and from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (musicology/music theory, literature, film studies, and media studies). The aim was to see how far our object of discussion might at least be translatable from one field to another, and to what extent it might be possible to develop an overarching theoretical model, or set of models.
Study Session 40THE HISTORY OF THE PAPAL CHAPEL
Authors: Sherr Richard
Published: November 2023

The purpose of this Study Session on the papal chapel was to assess the progress that had been made since the last IMS Study Session on this topic at the 1987 meeting in Bologna, and to consider new avenues of research and methodology that are being explored at present and may be explored in the future.
Contexts For Brass: History, Performance, Culture
Authors: Nussbaum Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

Jeffrey Nussbaum’s preliminary remarks concerned the recent important developments in scholarship and performance practice in all areas of the early brass field, and the satisfaction the Historic Brass Society had at being able to share with the rest of the music community three outstanding representative papers. Further mention was made of the importance of creating a forum for the exchange of ideas between different groups in the cultural and intellectual community.
Recent Mozart Research And Der Neue Kochel
Authors: Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

By way of introduction, Neal Zaslaw, the editor of Der neue Kochel (NK, Wiesbaden and Leipzig, in preparation), explained that it would attempt as complete an account as at present possible of authentic sources and authentic versions of Mozart’s works. This means leaving a complete account of all editions as well as of secondary and tertiary manuscripts to later bibliographical efforts. The numbering of works will return to the first edition of Kochel’s Verz.eichnis, omitting more than sixty works not by Mozart, returning to appendices the sketches, drafts, and fragments that, in the third and sixth editions, were inserted into the main chronology, and prefixing with a bold symbol any Kochel number that no longer meaningfully signifies a work’s position in the chronology. Stanley Sadie was concerned about the fact that, despite the first word of the title Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis, some works would thereby knowingly be presented out of chronological order. Zaslaw responded that every other scheme proposed for cataloguing Mozart’s works had inconsistencies just as great or greater, and involved either an enormous increase in complexity or abandoning the well-known numbering to which everything was already keyed; this was a practical rather than an ideal solution, and the least of several evils.
New Methods, New Visions: Computational Initiatives For A New Millennium
Authors: Vollsnes Arvid
Published: November 2023

Ewa Dahlig gave an update on the Essener Assoziativ Code (EsAC) project, founded by the late Hellmut Schaffrath and now in progress at the Institute for the Arts, Warsaw. EsAC was developed for encoding monophonic music, with some of the particular demands of folk-music research in mind (analysis, printing, sorting, maintenance of related documentation, etc.). The general architecture of the system provides for various data capture/input, manipulation, and output processes. Data can be exchanged with encoding systems such as DARMS, Score, and KERN, as well as TeX, PCX, and MIDI formats. EsAC is used by researchers in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, and Luxembourg. The repertory of encoded musical works currently numbers about 20,000; the majority of pieces are German and Polish folksongs. The Institute for the Arts would like to build a central database of international data while developing a system for the distribution of software tools, as well as for data collection and distribution.
Session 4: Broadcasting and the Media
Authors: Theresa Rose M
Published: November 2023

Histories of early cinema generally identify a paradigmatic shift between 1907 and 1917. During these years the early ‘cinema of attractions’, which emphasized the exhibition of cinematic technology, gave way to narrative films. As Miriam Hansen has recently stressed, this shift should be understood above all as a transformation in relations between film and spectator. With the newer modes of narration, the spectator was offered new positions of understanding and subjectivity, not so much as part of a particular exhibition or technological event, but rather from a space within the fictional worlds of specific films. Spectatorship became part of the film itself, as a point of address, a textual entity that worked to standardize cinematic consumption. Important to this shift in modes of spectatorship were the new genres of the historical film, the literary, and, especially, the operatic adaptation. This paper offers a preliminary exploration of the impact of operatic practices scenography, narrative, musical-on cinema during this crucial period.
Session 5: Early Polyphony
Authors: Ferreira Manuel Pedro
Published: November 2023

This paper addressed a central question underlying modern research on medieval musical sources: how to recognize early polyphony. Taking as its subject the versus for St Martial written at the Aquitanian monastery of Saint-Martial de Limoges by Ademar de Chabannes (F-Pn lat. 909, ff. 202-205), it showed that most of the criteria that have been invoked in the past to deny a polyphonic character to this composition are seriously flawed. Yet the alternative interpretation is by no means easily admitted: musical expectations and reliance on extant theoretical sources limit the horizon of acknowledgment. A discussion of the issues raised by this composition leads, if not to the revision of received opinion concerning the role of Saint-Martial de Limoges in the development of early polyphony, at least to a new epistemological awareness of current musicological assumptions.
Session 7: Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Music
Authors: Eitan Zohar
Published: November 2023

Examining musical repertories as well as data from empirical psychological studies, this paper investigated some structural corollaries of virtual registral direction (up, down, lateral) in terms of Eugene Narmour’s implication realization (1-R) model. The paper studied registrally opposing variants of basic melodic structures (as defined by the 1-R model) in selected musical repertories, comparing their frequency and examining their structural settings. It also re-examined in 1-R terms data from studies of melodic expectancy, comparing the basic melodic structures generated by ascending implicative intervals with those generated by descending ones of a similar magnitude. Both experimental data and melodic analysis indicate that the implications of ascent and descent differ significantly, suggesting that principles involving virtual registral direction should be incorporated into the bottom-up foundation of an 1-R model. To complement the model, a revised rule of proximity taking melodic direction into account was proposed.
Session 9: The Fifteenth-Century Tradition
Authors: Bloxam M Jennifer
Published: November 2023

The impetus and intentions behind cultivation of the chanson Mass, that subgenre of liturgical polyphony that takes as its cantus firms not a plainsong melody but rather the tenor of a secular chanson, have yet to be closely examined. While the cultural historian Johan Huizinga interpreted the phenomenon as a musical symptom of the general decay of late medieval culture, Howard Mayer Brown and others have recently taken a more sympathetic view, recognizing in the chanson Mass a manifestation of the period’s inclination to equate secular and sacred love, and observing the likely use of the chanson Mass in services dedicated to the Blessed Virgin or nuptial celebrations. This paper offered an expansion of the latter view, concentrating in particular on the Burgundian court culture that provided the focal point for the creation of chanson Masses during the first two
Session 10: Baroque Sacred Music
Authors: Summers William
Published: November 2023

This paper was the first musicological study to examine the archival evidence of the archdiocese of Manila, including the bishop’s and the chapter’s correspondence, diaries, historical chronicles, and eye-witness accounts, all relating directly to the cultivation of music in the cathedral during the years 1589-1700. During that period, five bishops occupied the see. Each had a direct impact upon music in the cathedral, and each contributed substantially to the increase in the musical fabric. By the time of Bishop Diego Camacho y Avila (d. 1705), the cathedral boasted a major musical establishment and an extensive music library, and was fitted with two pipe organs.
Session 11: Music and Society in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Ohrstrom Eva
Published: November 2023

From the late eighteenth century until the late 1820s musical salon evenings modelled on those of Central Europe were cultivated in Sweden. These took place in aristocratic houses, and very often the hostess was central to the proceedings. Since public concert life was still undeveloped, the musical salons were of great importance. A typical example of a musical salon was that of the Countess Margaret a Cronstedt at Karlberg in Stockholm. She herself was a good piano-player, and she invited famous musicians to play chamber music with her and to perform for the society frequenting her salon. Aspects I discussed included: the salon as a scene where women could cultivate their accomplishments and ‘create’ their ‘womanliness’ as well *as their musical skills; the salon as a scene for amateurs as well as professional musicians; and, finally, salon society and its impact on male professional composers.
Session 12: New Music
Authors: Perloff Nancy
Published: November 2023

During the 1950s a group of American composers introduced a new conception of the musical score. Departing from standard notation, they invented graphic symbols which acted as visual guidelines for the performer. This paper argued that in such indeterminate compositions the score becomes an artistic expression in its own right. The grid notation of Feldman, the dashes in space of Brown, the graphs of Cage, and the shorthand symbols of Wolff are visual notations conveying spatialized sound and a lack of hierarchy between parts. Intriguing paradoxes emerge which alter current thinking: how do we reconcile the contrast between the personal, hand-drawn graphic symbols and the composers’ desire to remove intention? Does the preeminence given to David Tudor’s systematic realizations contradict the premiss of indeterminacy? Or is indeterminate music more determinate than we might think? Using music manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Santa Monica, California, I demonstrated the critical interplay of sound and visual expression in indeterminate music.
Session 13: Early Theory and Music
Authors: Balensuela C Matthew
Published: November 2023

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, music and law were closely related, though this area has not received systematic study in modern times. This paper considered the diverse connections between music and law by summarizing past and current research in four areas: laws relating to music, the use of law in theoretical works, the use of legal texts and ideas in musical works, and persons active in both legal and musical activities. Considering law as a sister discipline of music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance can help scholars explain obscure passages in musical texts, clarify ideas in music-theory treatises, and establish a broader perspective of the roles of both music and the law in society.
Session 16: Technology and Systematic Musicology
Authors: Pecquet Frank
Published: November 2023

A methodological reflection on the objectives of computer music composition facilitates the transition from a logical use or a rationalized proceeding of technological tools to the domain of the aesthetic. This paper clarified in three connected axes of thought the development of music composed with computers. The first is the concept of material, that is, the sonic technical phenomenon or ‘operative technical method’; the second is the concept of technique-compositional thought, writing, and notation; and the third is the concept of new relationships between composer and sound.
Session 19: Early Twentieth Century
Authors: Antokoletz Elliott
Published: November 2023

The intention in this paper was to show how two early twentieth-century operas, Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande (1902) and Bart6k’s Bluebeard’s Castle (19rr), transform the harmonic structures of the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language, and how this language reflects the psycho-dramatic symbolism of the Franco-Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck and his Hungarian disciple, Bela Balazs. In reaction to the realism of nineteenth-century theatre, many authors began to develop a new interest in psychological motivation and a level of consciousness manifested in metaphor, ambiguity, and symbol. In his plays, Maeterlinck was to transform the internal concept of subconscious motivation into an external one, in which human emotions and actions are controlled by Fate. These operas represent the first significant attempts to establish more profound correspondences between the symbolist dramatic conception and the new musical language. This language is based almost exclusively on interactions between pentatonic/diatonic folk modalities and their more abstract whole-tone and other symmetrical transformations, the opposition of these two extremes serving as the basis for dramatic polarity between the characters as real-life beings and as symbols of Fate.
Session 20: Ethnology
Authors: Qureshi Regula Burckhardt
Published: November 2023

Ma’dan-ul-Mausiqi (Mine of Music), an Urdu treatise written around the time of the Great Uprising (1857), is today widely but selectively used as a historical source. Written by a courtier who had also held a British colonial post, this highly syncretic work is modelled on musicological treatises of past centuries while richly chronicling current oral tradition and musical practice, all with reference to both Hindu-Sanskrit and Muslim-Persian interpretative frames. Mine of Music is also a connoisseur’s personal chronicle of the courtly musical life cut off by the British destruction of the Lucknow court; at the same time it contributes to the British agenda to make classical cultural knowledge accessible through vernacular texts. The goal of my paper was to examine how this treatise and its subsequent dissemination have contributed to the process of constructing an Indian musicology while also problematizing its premisses.
Session 21: Renaissance Source Studies
Authors: Owens Jessie Ann
Published: November 2023

Until the past decade, scholarship on compositional process for music before 1600 was based partly on instinct (‘composers must have used scores’) or intuition about musical style. But the discovery of manuscripts that composers actually used for sketching, drafting, and revising their music has opened up new avenues for understanding their working methods and certain aspects of the music itself. More than 100 such manuscripts by over thirty composers have been identified so far, and others will surely surface. These autographs range from fair copies in choirbooks to very rough scribbles added to the blank staves of manuscripts used primarily for other purposes. This paper, in addition to presenting a checklist of autograph manuscripts, explored the methodology for identifying and authenticating manuscripts as autographs, in part by drawing on work in the cognate disciplines of art history and literary history.
Session 22: Opera around 1700
Authors: Cetrangolo Annibale
Published: November 2023

La opera llega a Iberia y America conflictivamente, creando problematicas de autoidentificacion cultural. Es un area muy diferente a la italiana originaria, ya que los escenarios estan ocupados por formas dramaticas locales desarrolladisimas. Algunos generos musicales-villancico y prezepe-ya proponian situaciones dramaticas, pero solo gracias al nuevo poder (Madrid, 1701), la opera italiana y la tragedia francesa entran en la carte. En esta comunicacion se demostro el rol determinante de ciertas familias de nobles-funcionarios en el primera circulacion de la opera como puente con la Europa del progreso. Estos nobles patrocinaron personalmente otro genero derivado y util al encomio del monarca, como es la serenata vocal, asi como formas (concerto grosso) e instrumentos (violin) considerados como emblemas de lo italiano. En este sentido resulta ejemplar el rol de los Spinola protectores de Facco, quienes promovieron su musica tanto en el centro como en la periferia del poder: Mexico.
Session 23: Twentieth-Century Topics
Authors: Roman Zoltan
Published: November 2023

Since a fruitful and promising burst of activity in the 1970s and Sos, musical scholarship has seemingly given up on the conundrum presented by (musical) Jugendstil (art nouveau, etc.). The premiss of this paper is that Jugendstil (etc.) is both a useful interdisciplinary concept for embracing the ‘transitional’ on either side of 1900 (or between Impressionism and Expressionism), and a flexible, work-specific hermeneutical (as distinct from an exclusively technical-analytical) tool. Following the establishment of the operative cultural and historical parameters, the bulk of this paper was devoted to a comparative examination of literary, visual, and musical artefacts selected (for practical reasons) from the German-Austrian orbit. Mainly in an attempt to escape the acquired burden of past exploration in the ‘mainstream’ music of the period (for example, Mahler, Strauss, and the Second Viennese School), musical examples were drawn from the ‘peripheral’ artsong literature (for example, Liszt, Zemlinsky, Szymanowski, and Braunfels).
Session 24: Jazz and Pop
Authors: Kernfeld Barry
Published: November 2023

A preliminary definition of jazz fleshed out from the perspective of sound and practice contrasted ritualistic elements live and on record, considered the relative weight of musical building-blocks, and summarized distinctive aspects of instrumentation, timbre, rhythm, and the creative process. Without denying that jazz, as music, intertwines and overlaps in complex ways with other twentieth-century genres, this paper argued that a distinctive musical identity resides in the combination of these characteristics. But from other perspectives, including racism, technology, dance, entertainment, gender, canon, film-each considered in relation to the musical life of performers and audiences-jazz appears to be an artificial creation. The better one understands its contextualization, the more one wonders if there is such a thing as jazz.
Session 27: Nineteenth-Century Opera
Authors: Gallo Denise P
Published: November 2023

Vincenzo Bellini left Sicily as the hope of his fellow Catanese, and when he returned in 1832 he was hailed as the hero who had demonstrated their artistic spirit to the world. His death three years later catapulted him into a new realm: that of patriotic symbol. At a time when Sicilians needed a standardbearer in the face of Bourbon tyranny, Bellini’s name and music became, as one liberal demanded, ‘a war cry’. This symbolism was perceived so clearly that pro-Bourbon forces employed Bellini’s music against Sicilian patriots.
Session 30: Early Dance
Authors: Sparti Barbara
Published: November 2023

Would You Like to Dance this Frottola? Choreographic Concordances in Two Early Sixteenth-Century (Tuscan?) Sources An anonymous manuscript dated 1510 and another by a dancing-master called II Papa from c.1520 contain descriptions of twenty dances, the titles of almost half of which correspond to those of contemporary frottolas. While the dances, for trios only, use the step vocabulary of the previous century, they are far less varied. They have, however, a distinctive and more popular style, characterized by a choreographic squareness (a strong 4/4 feeling) and a strophe-refrain structure. This presentation showed (with the help of some danced examples) how some of the balletti do, indeed, fit the concordant frottolas very-or fairly-well, problems arising with polyrhythmic settings, or when music and dance apparently use different mensurations. Besides helping to fill in the gap in our knowledge of early sixteenth-century Italian dance, these sources add another dimension to the study of the multifaceted frottola.
Session 31: Early Twentieth-Century USA
Authors: Lambert Philip
Published: November 2023

The last fifteen years or so have seen major reconsideration of Charles Ives and his place in music history. Scholars have examined both the musical influences on the composer, revealing a stronger debt to the European tradition than had been previously thought, and the hotly debated chronology of his work. This paper reflected on the recent revisionism while offering another new perspective that further informs Ives’s image. Rejecting the customary relegation of his most innovative works to a separate category known as ‘the experiments’, the paper presented a unified view of Ives that places all of his musical ideals and practices under a single rubric. It used analyses of Ives’s musical and literary texts to portray a musical mind resistant to easy labels, and a compositional catalogue in which the notion of ‘experiment’ can have only very limited application. Ultimately it lends further support to the revised view of Ives’s artistic debts, while offering further refutation of any radically new compositional chronology.
Session 32: Early Twentieth-Century France
Authors: Hart Brian J
Published: November 2023

During the first decade of this century, music in France was strongly influenced by political concerns that developed as a result of the Dreyfus Affair. Musical genres became subject to political interpretation, and among these the symphony incited particular controversy. Political interests affected the symphony in three ways. First, many musicians projected partisan qualities upon the symphony and either lauded the genre as the embodiment of tradition or damned it as the musical incarnation of political reaction and German hegemony. Second, some symphonies contained political messages or lent themselves to such reading; examples include d’Indy’s Symphony no. 2, which disciples explained as a defence of tradition, and Ropartz’s Symphony no. 3,
Session 4: Multimedia
Authors: Ballester Jordi
Published: November 2023

By the end of the Middle Ages, the figure of the shepherd-musician had become a popular character in the iconographical depictions of many religious subjects. My contribution, based on exhaustive research of Catalano-Aragonese panel paintings between c.1350 and 1500, showed in diagrammatic form how this phenomenon developed in a particular time and place. The diagram established links between shepherd-musicians and (1) Catalano-Aragonese depictions of the Nativity, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Annunciation to Joachim, and the Epiphany; (2) religious and contemporary texts; (3) sacred drama; and (4) certain musical instruments. The development of these links brings to light an artistic tendency to include glimpses of real life, and the habit of using pictorial patterns based on stereotyped models also emerges.
The Pains and Pleasures of Liberation
Authors: Latham Alison , Parker Roger
Published: November 2023

It is a hundred years since Verdi died, and more of his operas are now in the repertory than at any other period, whether during his lifetime or after it. Such works as Stiffelio or Alzira or Il corsaro, which rather quickly disappeared from nineteenth-century stages, have now been revived, recorded more than once, been presented in elaborate critical editions, and been the object of a mass of other scholarly activity. While performance of any of these operas would have been prohibitively difficult fifty years ago (with non-existent or unreliable performing materials, a complete absence of a ‘performing tradition’, etc.
In Praise of the Pragmatic
Authors: Porter Andrew
Published: November 2023

First, a footnote. When James Hepokoski quotes from a late production book the phrase ‘It is absolutely necessary that artists take full notice of the staging [herein] and conform to it’, the ‘artists’ (gli artisti) may not refer, as one might expect, to everyone involved in the performance. In the context, it may apply specifically to the designers of the scenery and costumes; the sentence may not be quite as prescriptive as it seems.
Lights . . . Action
Authors: Powers Harold
Published: November 2023

I should like to start by touching on a question raised by David Rosen: whether the stage directions should be considered part of the text. A former teacher of mine was once heard to say ‘God save us from an opera director who wants to express himself’ (today he would have added ‘or herself’); and we should include set designers too. In my own moments of particular outrage at directorial whimsy for which I may have paid well over $100, I used to ask myself the same question.
‘Trust the tale, not the teller’
Authors: Rosselli John
Published: November 2023

First, a few words on the question of naturalezza (‘naturalness’). At all times, the reigning theatrical convention has been thought ‘natural’. There are many examples: without going back to Hamlet’s advice to the players or to David Garrick, both of which, of course, have to do with great naturalness (though if we were to see Burbage or Garrick, we would surely be very surprised), we have documents closer in time. For instance, at about the turn of the century; Forbes Robertson was supposed to be a much more spontaneous, natural Hamlet than his immediate predecessor, Henry Irving.
On ‘Exactly what is Written’
Authors: Brown Clive
Published: November 2023

David Lawton’s paper highlights with admirable clarity some interesting and important aspects of nineteenth-century practice, ones that have scarcely been taken into account by the majority of singers and conductors of Verdi’s operas. I should like briefly to consider one or two closely related broader issues, concerning the relationship of the written text to the aural conceptions or expectations that lay behind it. Whether these have any bearing on the way in which modern performers wish to approach Verdi’s text is for performers and conductors to ponder.
Ballet in Italy: The Background to Verdi
Authors: Hansell Kathleen K
Published: November 2023

The ballet was always an important component of the Italian musical theatre. During the seventeenth century; at the first performances of public opera after 1637, there were often short ballets included within the opera’s acts. However, by the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, when the Arcadian theorists started to write about a type of serious opera (opera seria) that would no longer include such extraneous elements as comedy; dances, and so on, ballets were removed from opera.
On ‘Traditional’ Performance
Authors: Dotto Gabriele
Published: November 2023

An important point made by Philip Gossett concerns the unreliability of tradition. I would like to add that not only is the concept of tradition (in such cases) unreliable, it is in effect indefinable. A popular image used to describe the work done in a critical edition of a musical score is that of the restoration of paintings and frescos, the idea being that the fundamental work of the editor entails a sort of identification of a base layer.
The ‘Textualization’ of Opera
Authors: Castelvecchi Stefano
Published: November 2023

A criticism often levelled at the ongoing critical editions of ltalian opera, the Verdi edition among them, is that they attempt to ‘textualize’ the operas. The term has at least two implications. First, it suggests that such editions tend to identify the work (the opera) with a text (meaning a written text), whereas a work is in fact much more than a text. One can choose, for instance, to identify the work with the entire spectacle, so that it embraces, together with the text, singers, conductor, stage designer, director, the audience, and so on.
‘Talking to Ourselves’: The Early Years
Authors: Richtarik Marilynn J
Published: November 2023

Field Day’s press release for Three Sisters announced that it was a ‘translation’ in the deepest sense of the word. Friel interprets Chekhov’s masterpiece for contemporary audiences in conveying not only the meaning of the original words but also the essence and significance of Chekhov’s vision. He illuminates for us the complexities and confusions of life in Ireland today. Perhaps the best place to begin a discussion of the 1981 tour is to reflect upon what was meant by that. What drew Friel to Three Sisters, and what made him and Rea decide that Field Day should produce an Irish version of it? A pragmatic answer to the second question may be advanced. Field Day needed a script, and Friel’s treatment of Chekhov’s Three Sisters was available, completed even before Translations. Possibly, too, the directors felt that doing a classic might reduce the pressure of expectations on the company and lessen the impact of what Friel called ‘the second novel jinx’.
‘Not Just A Little Touring Company’: Field Day Further Afield
Authors: Richtarik Marilynn J
Published: November 2023

Field Day’s reputation in the first few years of its existence had depended mainly on the talents of its founders, Brian Friel and Stephen Rea. On 15 September 1983, the company launched a new venture that would engage more extensively the energies of its other directors, who had hitherto confined their public activity to the penning of controversial (some said pretentious) programme notes on the plays.Seamus Heaney recalls, Translations was a moment in theatre when you could feel a relationship between the activity of a single dramatist exploring a theme, and the condition of the country. That play went intravenously into the conscious ness of the audiences and the country I suppose what we were search ing for were other ways in which that kind of stirring and self-inspection could be extended beyond theatre.
Prologue
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

England was not only the largest and richest of Charles’s three kingdoms, but politically the most highly developed. Compared with the other major monarchies of early modern Europe, that of England possessed both strengths and weaknesses. In the later sixteenth century England had been arguably the most stable and best governed realm in Europe, and there was no sharp decline under James I.

Its greatest asset was its political unity. The authority of the king and his privy council extended on an almost equal footing into every corner of the land, and the system of local government was virtually uniform throughout. The regional jurisdictions of the Council of the North and the Council in the Marches of Wales, and the palatine privileges of Durham, Lancashire, and Cheshire, constituted only minor exceptions. A single system of common law operated throughout England and Wales; a single parliament represented the whole realm (except County Durham, though the Bishop of Durham sat in the Lords), and the taxes that it voted were levied equally (at least in theory) throughout it. The contrast with the regional diversity within the French and Spanish monarchies could not be stronger. In the former, only the central Île de France enjoyed anything approaching England’s political and legal uniformity.
The Commonwealth at War
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

When the nineteen-year-old Charles II heard the horrifying news of his father’s death, he was at the court of his brother-in-law William II of Orange at Breda. William himself would have done all he could to help him, but the powerful regent class of Holland and Zealand, who dominated the States- General, were set against involving the United Provinces in any further warfare. It was only months since the Peace of Westphalia had formally brought to an end the exhausting struggle that we call the Thirty Years War; indeed their own war of independence had lasted with one break for eighty years. For Charles the great question was whether he should look first to the Irish or the Scots to help him back to his English throne. The Scots had been prompt to proclaim him King of Great Britain, but they made the actual exercise of his regal powers conditional on his giving satisfaction regarding religion and taking the Solemn League and Covenant. Ormond and his adherents in Ireland, needless to say, wanted to impose no such conditions.
The First Phase of Cromwellian Rule
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

In England, during the dozen years prior to the Protectorate, each major political turning-point had alienated a significant section of the Long Parliament’s original adherents, and so had narrowed the basis of support for the government of the day. When Civil War loomed, the constitutional royalists who had helped to pass the reforms of 1641 broke with Pym and his party and rallied to the king. In the crisis of 1648–9, most of the political presbyterians were driven into the wilderness by Pride’s Purge and the regicide, and some of them became royalists. In 1653, Cromwell’s expulsion of the Rump made enemies for life of such parliamentary republicans as Haselrig, Vane, Bradshaw, and Marten, while the Fifth Monarchists among others were never to forgive his elevation to the Protectorship at the end of the year.
‘A Single Person and a Parliament’
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

Although Cromwell and his councillors and diplomats got through an impressive amount of work during his first nine months as Protector, they all knew that the regime would face a severe test when, as the Instrument of Government decreed, its first parliament met on 3 September 1654, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester. From July onward the first general elections for fourteen years were held in England, and the first ever to a parliament of all three kingdoms. The resultant assembly deeply disappointed Cromwell’s hopes. It has been argued that he had largely himself to thank for this, since he failed to understand that parliaments in his revered Queen Elizabeth’s days had been rendered co-operative only through skilful management by a core of privy councillors and other royal servants, who used their large electoral influence to secure the return of a nucleus of grateful clients, and with their support steered the House into voting the measures and the subsidies that the government needed.1
Cavaliers in Arms, Swordsmen in the Saddle
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

Much the most imminent threat that Cromwell faced when he dissolved parliament came from the royalists who were planning an early general rising, and it will soon be shown how he countered it. But he also had to protect his back against other sorts of opponents. He knew very well that if the royalists had not enlisted the old Levellers in their cause it was not for want of trying. John Wildman was arrested on 10 February in the act of dictating a declaration calling upon the people to take up arms against him. Sexby, even deeper in conspiracy, escaped to the continent from Portland, abetted by the mayor of the town and governor of the castle, who actually arrested the party of soldiers sent to apprehend him because they had no written warrant. Leveller renegades, however, posed no serious menace.
The Regional Economy before 1450
Authors: Pollard A J
Published: November 2023

North-Eastern England straddles that line between highland and lowland zones which has been said to have ‘cleft England in twain’. The dominating feature of the landscape is the contrast between the pastoral high Pennines and North York Moors on the one hand and the mixed arable and pasture lowlands of the coastal plain, the Vale of York, and the Tees basin on the other. Four hundred years ago William Camden observed the same contrasts in topography and land use. Northumberland, he commented, ‘is mostly rough and barren’. The Pennine districts of Yorkshire and Durham ‘with craggy rocks and vast mountains’, ‘always exposed to wind and rain’, were ‘wild, solitary and unsightly’. The Vale of York and the lower river valleys, however, were ‘pleasant and fruitful’. County Durham may have been bleak to the west, but in the east parts and in the valleys of the Tees and Tyne ‘the ground is made very fruitful by tillage’. Even in Richmondshire, he observed, although the sides of the mountains here and there yield pretty rank grass, the bottoms and valleys ‘are not altogether unfruitful’.
Gentility: The Chase and Chivalry
Authors: Pollard A J
Published: November 2023

When in 1460 Richard Pigot senior of Ripon gave a warranty to his nephew for Little Burton and other lands he swore, as well as by the faith he owed unto God, ‘not to vex nor trouble him upon his truth and worship as a true gentleman’. His word as a gentleman was as important as his oath as a Christian. But what was meant by ‘gentleman’? It is well established that the fifteenth century witnessed in England the development of the concept and style of a gentleman. As we have seen, a line was drawn at approximately £ro clear income a year from land between those who were taken to be gentle and those who were not. But true gentility did not reside in material wealth alone. It derived ultimately from personal qualities: lineage, courtliness, generosity, and honour. But getting beneath the skin to the true feeling of the north-eastern gentleman towards chivalry is as hard as getting to the heart of his religious conviction. A code of honour, martial at heart, was no doubt instilled at an early age (or acquired by the new arrival), and subscribed to; but in the absence of direct personal testimony we can do little more than assume this. We have largely to rely on the evidence of gentility in action, of its visible show and demonstration to the world, especially in the skills of hunting and in expertise in arms.
Anglo-Scottish Relations,1448-1485
Authors: Pollard A J
Published: November 2023

A State of war existed between England and Scotland throughout the fifteenth century. Open war broke out on no fewer than six occasions between 1448 and 14961 and was waged for a total of eleven years in the half-century. When there was no open warfare a fragile truce was sustained, which needed frequent renewal and constant monitoring. Breaches of the truce were dealt with at special march days and diets. The wardens of the marches on both sides of the border needed to be vigilant that cross-border cattle-thieving and other incidents did not develop into major conflict. The chronic insecurity of the border and the instability of truces was an ever-present backdrop to life in the north-east: the whole of its society was drawn in when truces collapsed and open war was renewed. Not only was the success of kings and their deputies in defending the border itself vital to north-easterners, but also they tended to consider frontier security, in all but the most intensive periods of civic strife, as important as dynastic loyalty. Civil war and Scottish war became entangled at the beginning of Edward IV’s reign. Modern historians have tended to see the foreign entanglement as secondary.
The Neville Ascendancy,1461-1471
Authors: Pollard A J
Published: November 2023

IT took three years for the Yorkists to secure the whole of north-eastern England after their resounding victory at Towton. Henry VI, in flight from York, was for a brief while besieged by Sir Robert Ogle, Sir John Conyers, and others in . Carham Castle, Northumberland. He was able, however, to escape to Scotland. While Edward IV remained in York for three weeks, celebrating Easter there, Lords Faucon berg and Greystoke were sent to Beverley to secure the support of the townspeople. The king meanwhile moved north to Durham, where he arrived on 22 April and received Laurence Booth, the bishop, into his service, conferring on him the honour of being his confessor. By I May Edward IV reached Newcastle, where the earl of Wiltshire, John Morton, Sir William Plumpton, and other fugitives from Towton who had fled to Cockermouth in Cumberland were brought before him.3 Wiltshire was promptly executed. Beyond Newcastle Edward did not venture: but he left Fauconberg in command of the castle and Sir George Lumley at Tynemouth to support Sir Robert Ogle and others who were endeavouring to subdue Northumberland.4 He returned to Durham; to Middle ham to stay with Warwick (5-7 May); and then to York again, before setting off for Westminster and his coronation.
Introduction
Authors: Connolly S J
Published: November 2023

I immediately sent to all the Protestants in the neighbourhood to appear in arms here, and likewise the townsmen. Major Gibson drew out his company and we proclaimed his Majesty on horseback in a great congregation, after which the soldiers fired three volleys, another at the drinking his Majesty’s health, another at the Prince’s health, another at the Royal family’s. The town and countrymen also fired several volleys by themselves pretty well, being most of them old soldiers. I sent a hogshead of beer out of my cellar and claret, at a large bonfire, and Major Gibson provided a large bowl of punch. Every window illuminated and the bells ringing and innumerable huzzas. We did not go to bed that night.
Law and the Maintenance of Order
Authors: Connolly S J
Published: November 2023

‘There is no doubt, that if the poor should reason, “We’ll be the poor no longer, we’ll make the rich take their turn”, they could easily do it, were it not that they can’t agree.’ The issue raised by Samuel Johnson has become a central concern of the modern social historian. A steadily expanding literature on crime, law, and social control has sought to explore the ways in which, in societies marked by enormous inequalities, the few were able to maintain their mle over the many. In the case of Ireland, the question has an added point. The seventeenth century had seen the overthrow of one élite by another. In the struggles by which that overthrow was accomplished, the common people had overwhelmingly taken the side of the losers.
Sickness and its Treatment
Authors: Harvey Barbara
Published: November 2023

The historians of sickness and its treatment in the Middle Ages must envy the recent achievements of the historians of population change in the same period. If, even now, less is known about population change in the Middle Ages than in the early modern period, medievalists are much better informed about the subject than were their predecessors a generation or two ago. This advance has been made possible by a drastic narrowing of the field of enquiry, from the vaguely drawn ‘country’ that was so often written about earlier to specific villages and manors: the historical demographers have learnt how to exploit small-scale observations to brilliant effect.
Corrodies
Authors: Harvey Barbara
Published: November 2023

Hugh Latimer, in one of his sermons, had this to say about the monasteries, which had been dissolved by the time he wrote: ‘When the end is naught, all is naught. So were these monks’ houses, these religious houses. There were many people, specially widows, which would give over house-keeping, and go to such houses, when they might have done much good in maintaining of servants, and relieving of poor people; but they went their ways.’ Latimer referred to the monastic lodger or, as they sometimes said, the monastic sojourner. He would have known that monasteries had been in the habit of granting benefits resembling those of a lodger—including, for example, food and drink—to people who did not actually live in the monastery or even very near it; but it was the arrangements involving resident lodgers that he wished to condemn. In the monastic vocabulary, a lodger’s bundle of privileges was a corrody (corrodium), and the same word was used of the privileges granted to non-residents. In both cases, moreover, the recipient was known as a corrodian (corrodarius). I shall discuss corrodians as well as their corrodies.
The Idea of Character Private Habits and Public Virtues
Authors: Collini Stefan
Published: November 2023

When in the summer of 1902 Helen Bosanquet published a book called The Strength of the People, she sent a copy to Alfred Marshall. On the face of it, this might seem a rather unpromising thing to have done. Mrs Bosanquet, an active exponent of the Charity Organiza tion Society’s ‘casework’ approach to social problems, had frequently expressed her dissatisfaction with what she regarded as the misleading abstractions of orthodox economics, and in her book she had even ventured a direct criticism of a point in Marshall’s Principles. Marshall, then Professor of Political Economy at Cam bridge and at the peak of his reputation as the most authoritative exponent of neo-classical economics in Britain, was, to say the least, sensitive to criticism, and he had, moreover, publicly taken issue with the COS on several previous occasions. But perhaps Mrs Bosanquet knew what she was about after all.
Religious Conflict: Resistance and Change
Authors: Skeeters Martha C
Published: November 2023

The religious divisions which so concerned the Corporation were played out among the clergy and laity in the city’s streets and churches. The furore itself contributed to the diminution of traditional clerical authority, particularly since it required the divided clergy to make lay allies. Moreover the spread of Protestant ideas propelled a new lay assertiveness and discouraged traditional distinctions between clergy and laity. The balance of power in the relationship between the two collapsed in favour of the laity. Out of these developments emerged competitiveness among the clergy, an important element in their atomization. And here lay the culmination of the medieval clerical community’s destruction.
The Decline of the Parish Clergy
Authors: Skeeters Martha C
Published: November 2023

In 1530 the parochial system of Bristol seemed part of the natural order of things, as unchanging as the tidal flow of the Avon which was the city’s lifeline to distant lands. A new parson could look forward to twenty years or so in his parish and his parishioners depended on this kind of continuity as a stabilizing force.Many of the incumbents were university graduates, a number of whom even held post-graduate degrees. They were an educated elite who could offer their parishioners personal guidance as well as instruction from their pulpits.2 Most had the assistance of stipendiaries and presided over churches whose chantry priests offered a continual and colourful liturgy. Forty years later, however, parishioners were accustoming themselves to intermittent service by uneducated curates, whose status was also diminished by their lack of tenure and dependence on wages.