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On the Chicago School of Sociology; has made our understanding of cities and urban life easier?

16th October, 2013

The Chicago School of Sociology emerged in the late 19th century under the leadership of local Professor Albion Small. Since its establishment, the school has produced world class researchers in the field of urban sociology as well as being the point of origin of the ‘symbolic interactionism’ perspective, which spans across various sub-realms of sociology. As an entity present in the world of Sociology, the school has made many contributions to our understanding of cities and urban lifestyle through its various publications and insight into the context surrounding and driving circumstances, from which what is considered to be ‘urban life’ today stems. When discussing the topic of ‘Urban Life’ with regards to the school there are three names credited with highlighting the purpose of the research of urban life; Louis Wirth, Ernest Burgess and Robert Park, all of whom aided in the progression of the school. (A Second Chicago School?: The Development of a Postwar American Sociology - Gary Alan Fine)

One of the main goals of the school was to figure out how an increase in urbanism during times of large industrial expansion (such as the industrial revolution) could possibly contribute to the increase of contemporary social problems. The school’s members made use of their surroundings and based their research on Chicago, the population of which had exponentially grown in the short space of fifty years. It was this expansion however that caused Chicago to begin to downward spiral into a state where homelessness was rife, low wages were low despite long hours and harsh living conditions were the norm. These conditions were linked with the incoming surplus of European immigrants into the state. This research carried out to obtain this data was among the first of its kind, without which today it would be unheard of to introduce population control. (Sassen, S., New frontiers facing urban sociology at the millennium The British Journal of Sociology: Volume 51, Number 1, 2000) Following along a similar topic but different in terms of research, the school also studied race and class relations within Chicago post-saturation. The mass surge in population expanded the borders of inner-city Chicago and within those social groups of the same kind began to band together. This was particularly observed where middle and lower class resided, which began to form the more modern appearance of ghettos and seriously run-down neighbourhoods. The establishments of privatized housing areas were also observed and recorded as some of the first Chicago suburbs, inhabited by upper-middle class and so on, were beginning to appear. This was a wide leap regarding finds in terms of how people think regarding classes, as it highlighted that like-minded people as well as people in similar situations were likely to band with each other and avoid other class interaction, even to the extent of moving to land outside of the actual city.

Expanding on this, the School began to observe the surge of inter-community relations and political stances being developed within the various emerging subcultures. They also began to wonder why the roles of local institutions were key in generating a positive attitude amongst groups in terms of their formation of social links and communal acceptance. (The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Through this line of thought subculture theories emerged, which proposed that people living in an urban setting are able to find ways of creating a sense of community despite the prevailing alienation and anonymity. These theories opened unlocked a door to continue on with the school’s research and produced various publications regarding different aspects of social life. The first of these was centred around ‘deviant groups’ and their emergence as a result of ‘the interaction of people’s perceptions of themselves with others’ view of them’ (Do people know how others view them? An empirical and theoretical account. Kenny, David A.; DePaulo, Bella M., Psychological Bulletin, Vol 114(1), Jul 1993, 145-161). The study was carried out by Chicago School alumnus Albert Cohen where he noted that subcultures consisted of individuals collectively resolving societal status problems by developing new values which rendered status-worthy the characteristics they shared (Delinquent Boys, A. Cohen 1955).

A study carried out by another alumnus Nels Anderson attempted to identify and highlight the internal structure of hobo (homeless people) communities also within Chicago. The term hobo itself had actually been coined by Anderson. The work is a fundamental text regarding the phenomenon of poverty and homelessness and their dynamics. When describing the tramp Anderson is quoted distinguishing him from other social classes from a minority viewpoint, “he was employed in temporary position, willing to go anywhere to seize the opportunity for a job, he was willing to wait to seize an opportunity better than the last”. The research carried out by Anderson lead to an interesting premonition surrounding today’s world despite the time of the study’s publication, “it’s Important to emphasize that the approach does not consider the American scholar as a hobo through a limiting case in American culture, but as a reality continues, as a variant of the dimension of poverty as a social figure in the development of capitalism and internal buoyancy of the labor force in the U.S.. “ hinting that at that stage we were not safe or secure in financial terms. (The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man, Nels Anderson, 1923 University of Chicago Press)

To recap, the Chicago School has been specialising in the field of Urban Sociology since its establishment. The contributions that the school’s alumni have made to the furthering on of sociology are unrivalled, and the researchers are/were some of the best at what they do. It’s impossible to ignore the thought provoking research that has been produced. Not only have their contributions been impressive and enlightening, but to assess their contributions we see that their means of research have been clinical and non-interfering, almost harking back to the days of the Socratic Method where subjects were merely observed to see what information they could provide. In conclusion, it is clear that the contributions made by the Chicago school of Sociology are reliable, informative and readily available to whoever may wish to further on their progress as a student, teacher or even just an advocate of sociology. The Knight and the Friar of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales; Would a modern audience find them interesting? 28th November, 2013

Geoffrey Chaucer lived in a time of great social and cultural change in England. The court in the 1300s still spoke in Norman French, which was also the dominating language of law, polite society and literature (Bragg). The links between England and France until this point had been very strong, as England owned many French territories, a factor which in large part helped cause the Hundred Years War.

Helen Cooper describes how sophisticated literature written for the court at this time was written in French. Chaucer’s decision to write in English was therefore ‘extraordinary’, and ‘probably could not have happened at an earlier date’ (Cooper), as English was rising in status and usage throughout various strata of society. By 1453, France had regained most of its territories, and ‘defining national identity in relation to France no longer made the sense it once did’ (Allen, 24)

The Black Death devastated the country in the mid-1300s; estimates range between a loss of a third to a loss of half of the population (Allen, 22). This decrease in population caused a shortage of labourers, which enabled serfs and peasant workers to bargain wages with their employers. In order to counter this, the 1349 Ordinance of Labourers, and the subsequent 1351 Statute of Labourers both attempted to freeze the wages of labourers to pre-Black Death rates (Rigby, 33).

This caused mass civil unrest, and saw rebels seizing towns across the country, and the murders of several high ranking members of court, such as Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury. This was known as the Peasant’s Revolt, and resulted in the abolition of poll tax, wage flexibility, and the decline of serfdom (Allen, 23).

This rebellion was seen by some as treachery against the ‘philosophy of the divine ordination of the three principal estates’ (Mann, 3). This ‘philosophy’ rested on the ideal that everyone in society had a function within one of three ‘estates’. These estates were: the First Estate, comprising the clergy and religious orders; the Second Estate, comprising knights and the nobility; and the Third Estate, comprising tenant farmers, labourers and serfs, who made up 80% of the population in the year 1200 (Given-Wilson, 5-6).

These estates did not however account for women, for the increasing population of townsfolk or for ranking the clergy in relation to the laity (Rigby, 27). The reality of societal structure is described by Rigby (27) as ‘two ladders or pyramids’, one side made up of the laity, and the other of the clergy.

The laity was roughly divided into three ranked estates: Peerage, comprising dukes, marquesses, earls and barons; Gentry, comprising knights, squires and gentlemen; and Commons, comprising landlords, traders, craftsmen, peasants and labourers. The clergy separated into two wings - secular and regular. According to Rigby (28), the seculars were those orders who ministered directly to the laity, such as parish priests, bishops, and even the Pope. The regulars were those who had taken vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and whose dress and lifestyle were bound by various rules, such as monks, nuns and friars. Women were always ranked lowest within their estate, whether laity or clergy.

The Friar is a character who would be particularly interesting to a modern day audience, due to his transgressing against the social norms that Friars were supposed to adhere to. The idealised Friar of the Middle Ages was a man given a license to beg and preach roaming through a certain area, supporting himself by providing for the spiritual needs of its people. In order to obtain a license a friar had to take vows of poverty (Rhodes P 86), renouncing all physical possessions. They also vowed chastity and obedience to their bishop. However Chaucer’s Friar does not follow these norms of behaviour.

The Friar is an ignoble man who abuses his influence in society to serve his own ends. He has amassed personal wealth through his charm and ability to extract money from people. The extent of his greed is exposed in the “General Prologue” when he is “so pleasant” (Chaucer P 9) to a widow with only one shoe that he charms her out a farthing. The Friar is also driven by carnal lust. It is referenced that the Friar "maad many a mariage / of yonge wommen at his owene cost" (Chaucer, P212 – 213). The meaning implied is that the Friar is not paying the dowries of these women out of altruism rather he is marrying them off to cover up the fact that he has seduced them and taken their virginities. I believe that the Friar as a character would generate a considerable amount of interest in a modern audience as corruption within the church generates a lot of interest to this day. The recent success of the television series “The Borgias” which dramatizes the corruption of the Vatican around the turn of the sixteenth century shows that there is definitely a large audience interested in such things.

So, why would a modern viewer such as you or I find any sort of appeal from viewing a documentary about these specific pilgrims? Regarding the Knight's tale, James Roberts points out quite clearly that the descriptions featured are tedious for the modern reader, comparing them to the "static and dull" descriptions featured in Homeric Epics (Roberts, 23). While this may be true in some cases, it is hard to believe that the sheer appeal from a militaristic point of view would be ignored, especially with today's youths becoming more accustomed to violence through desensitisation via video games and over the top special effects in blockbuster movies. Robert and Laura Lambdin's "Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales", though perhaps inadvertently, emphasises this when analyzing the apparent harmony existing between religion and violence, “they learned nothing from the bloodthirsty errors of their forefathers, and that they were still possessed by...maniac savagery...making no distinction between coptic christians, jews and muslims, the put the whole city to the sword”. (Lambdin, 8)

Regarding the friar, it is interesting to draw comparisons between the church today and the state of it at Chaucer's time. Donald Howard made a point that friars were not under the jurisdiction of a higher authority at the time, and as a result of this they were immune to the law. This allowed for mass corruption within the church, with ideologies such as nepotism and polygamy accepted as normal amongst each other (Howard, 256). A modern reader may be interested, particularly at this point in time wherein the church has been revealed as being steeped in sacrilege behind closed doors, to note that throughout history the idea of a "clean" priest or friar has been tarnished due to the human condition. This comes as across to us readers as hypocritical and scandalous, as the church had attempted to instil in the communities a general sense that common good behaviour was expected by God, that ‘cleanliness is next to manliness’ (Cheshire, IX). This may come across as attractive to a modern audience given the recent lust for drama and risqué behaviour in performance. Chaucer’s choice to depict the Friar as a greedy man driven by his desires for women, money, fine food and drink shows that at this time Friars were not all held in high regard by society. At the time that Chaucer began work on the Canterbury tales friction had existed between Friars and almost every other religious group, including other orders of Friars. The Franciscan and Dominican sects had begun attacking each other roughly thirty years after their formation (William, P500). The Franciscan movement was continuing to split into smaller sects at this time. The Friars had also come under fire from the secular clergy and the Monks (William, P501). One of the motivating factors in these attacks was that the presence of other religious groups offering salvation cut into the amount of money that the established religious group could extract from an area. Thus Chaucer’s depiction of the Friar as an amoral, money grabber would have been in line with the views of the secular clergy and their followers. While the Friar himself is unlikely to be an accurate description of all Friars at the time, what his description does capture is the opinion of Friars in English society at the time (William, 500).

The Knight, at first glance, is painted in a far more flattering light than the Friar. In Chaucer’s time there was two schools of nights. There were secular knights who were described by St. Bernard as “the union of chivalry and monasticism”. There were also the knights of the Templar who bore the marks of their service like Chaucer’s knight (Mann 109). He is depicted as a “worthy” knight having fought many battles for his country with a haggard but noble demeanour, “his horses were goode, but he was not gay” (Chaucer, 3). Thus Chaucer has chosen to depict his knight as a valiant hero foregoing the rewards which his position could bring him. Chaucer’s knight is the idealised knight of his time; a bastion of goodness, he is chivalrous, honest and noble.

However this view does not take into account the historical context of the time in which Chaucer wrote the Canterbury tales. At the time that Chaucer wrote the Canterbury tales, the age of Knights, of any type, fighting out of fealty and honour were largely over, they were now fighting for pay (Jones, 20). This representation as the Knight as honourable could then be read either as a criticism of the current group of mercenaries occupying the position that was once held by Knights (Jones, 23). The possible interpretation of the Knight as a subtle, sarcastic critique of the Knights at the time is far more likely given Chaucer’s style.

He criticised the knights of the age he wrote in by employing the idealised knight of folklore as a character in his Canterbury tales, by the light of his example the failings of contemporary nights would become very apparent.

We believe that this programme focusing on the Middle Ages through the Chaucer’s Knight and Friar would be educational, culturally enriching, and above all entertaining. Our aim is to allow audiences to discover and rediscover Chaucer through a modern medium accessible to all.

References

Allen, Valerie. “Medieval English, 500-1500”. English Literature in Context, Ed.Poplawski, Paul. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Bragg, Melvyn, Cooper, Helen et al. In Our Time “Chaucer”. BBC iPlayerRadio. BBC Radio 4: 09/02/06. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003hycq Accessed: 25/11/13

Cheshire, Gerard. Ed. The Canterbury Tales. Harper Collins, 2011

Given-Wilson, Chris. Ed. “An Illustrated History of Late Medieval England” Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

Howard, Donald Roy. The Idea of The Canterbury Tales, California: University of California Press, 1976.

Jones, Terry. Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary. London. Methuen. 1985.

Lambdin, Laura and Lambdin,Robert. Eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996.

Mann, Jill, Chaucer and medieval estates satire : the literature of social classes and the 'General prologue' to the 'Canterbury tales, London: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Rhodes, Jim. “Religion”. Chaucer: An Oxford Guide. Ed. Ellis, Steve. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Rigby, S.H. “Society and Politics”. Chaucer: An Oxford Guide. Ed. Ellis, Steve. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Roberts, James L. CliffsNotes on Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, New York: Wiley Publishing, 2000.

Williams, Arnold. Chaucer and the Friars. Speculum. Vol. 28, No.3 1953. Page 499-513

Gould’s Goldberg Variations

20th February, 2014

Glenn Gould was born with a natural gift for playing piano. In 1947, at the meagre age of 15, he made his professional debut as a pianist in Canada, labelling him as a child prodigy, demonstrating spectacular control and clarity across his repertoire (CBC Newsmagazine, June 23 1957) . Eight years later he would make his debut on-stage in the U.S, featuring in venues across Washington and New York. Part of Gould’s fame originated from his distinctive mannerisms; while playing through a piece of music he has a tendency to hum along with the main melody while still retaining his focus and virtuosic style. While visiting New York in 1955, Gould had an underlying objective next to his stage performances. Present in the Sony’s Columbia Masterworks Studio for the duration of four days, he would record the work that would propel his notoriety; The Goldberg Variations. The reception and acceptance of Gould’s recording became a launchpad which sprung his status internationally as a pianist. Gould would once again record the Variations a year before his death in 1981, but the main focus here will be the original 1955 recording. In this essay I plan to outline the reception and current status of the work, Gould’s personal touches on the work and to eventually come to a personal conclusion regarding the status of the recording.

The discussion of the reception of Gould’s work has recently become a somewhat controversial topic. In a 2007 interview conducted by CBC music, music critic John Terauds claimed that the 1955 recording was ‘the work of a brash 22 year old to show the world a thing or two’, and that the aria was what attracted audiences due to it sounding ‘much more cursory and impersonal’. These statements, however, are almost a direct contradiction to the ‘incredulous reception’ (Independent UK) the recording met initially in 1955, which is said to have caused ‘public and critical adulation on an unheard scale’ which provoked people to ‘[speak] of their amazement’ at the sound of Gould’s skill. It has to be noted, however, that these recent criticisms come only after the 1981 re-recording of the Goldberg Variations, which has proven incontrovertibly different in contrast to the original. One only needs to look at the differences in duration between the two, the 1955 recording coming in at 38 minutes with the 1981 recording lasting 45, to see that an older Gould had interpreted the Variations in a completely different way. ‘The 1981 remake is the product of years of performance and reflection’, says Teraud, directly addressing the differences between the two, ‘The tempos are more balanced. The music breathes.’ He also mentions that it is important not to shun the 1955 recording, stating that ‘it caused all the fuss’.

Looking at Gould’s interpretation of the work itself, it can be said that he wished to reject the Romantic approach to Bach that had been taken by pianists who preceded him (Wondrous Strange, 94), and that he would want to follow a more strict reading of the work, similar to that of Rosalyn Tureck (who had recorded a version of the Goldbergs prior to Gould). Unlike the slow-flowing aria, which an older Gould would take in the future, the young Gould begins as he means to go on with an uptempo andante. Commenting his performance of the aria, a younger Gould has called it ‘a docile but richly embellished soprano line, possesses an intrinsic homogeneity which bequeathes nothing to posterity and which is totally forgotten during the thirty variations’. It is worth noting that across the entirety of the two recordings, on the initial recording it seems the left hand lacks the clearer intonation that is present with the older Gould (possibly due to recording techniques).

One thing that remains consistent through the two recordings is the eccentricity that Gould is so well known for; both recording feature Gould humming,seemingly subconsciously, with the main melody track (featuring more prominently on the earlier recording, the later recording features a more hushed sound, albeit still noticeable to the listener). Consistent with both of the recordings is the sheer amount of emotion and emphasis which Gould poured into his performance. It can be seen from visuals that have accompanied the recordings that Gould becomes completely engrossed in performance, often using his free hand (when it is idle) to visualise the tempo in a manner not too dissimilar to a conductor (an example of which can be seen during variation 15 of the ‘81 studio performance video).

Regarding my own opinion, I have been somewhat torn between the two versions. Terauds said in his interview that in spite of his viewpoints, ‘no matter how hard I try, I can’t embrace his [Gould’s] interpretations’. Looking back to 1955, Gould was contracted by Columbia to record whatever he wanted, given a ‘carte blanche’ as Gould put it. Gould was inevitably questioned for his choice of work when recording, with the the CBS executives pointing out that the piece was written for harpsichord, yet the dispute passed. Gould commented on the minor dispute in an 1980 interview that ‘that [the argument] is the closest thing to obstruction’ he had ever faced as CBS. So, if a younger Gould was to be considered ‘reckless’, why would he be granted so much freedom? One would imagine that the matter at hand ultimately boils down to preference. Gould set a standard through his original recording, one that, in certain respects, he may have inadvertently surpassed in his later life. This does not make one recording superior to the other (disregarding audio equipment used to record the performance). It is easily forgotten that as time passes, the perception of what makes music ‘listenable’ can vary, that no single person’s taste in music will remain the same throughout their life. Author Erik Tarloff has stated that he once preferred the initial recording, yet as time passed he gained a new appreciation for the 80’s recording (aided by the advancements in sound remastering).

I have felt that in judging the two pieces, it may also be worth looking at motives for change; What had changed Gould that would cause him to flip the table on what he believed during his youth? As Gould aged, his initial principal belief that he would not record romantic-esque recordings faded, ultimately culminating in a very different, easy-listening version of the Goldberg Variations, the style of which could be compared to the likes of pianists such as Edward Fischer and Ernest MacMillan. Gould detailed in an 1982 interview ‘As I’ve grown older I find many performances - certainly a great majority of my own early performances - just too fast for comfort’. This begs the question, If Gould was as dextrose as he once was, might he have recorded this later performance in a similar manner to the original? Another interesting iota uncovered details Peter F. Oswalt’s theory that Gould may have been suffering mentally as a result of reliance on prescription drugs, which could potentially be held accountable for such a dramatic change in style, but personal sensitivity regarding such a topic has kept me from exploring that route further.

So, to conclude, I feel that to favour any one recording would be a disservice to Gould. He poured his life into his work, just as much in youth as he did before his death. It is quite apt that he ended his recording career with the pillar that started it all.

Bibliography

Bazzana, Kevin. Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould. Canada: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2003.

Hanks, Robert. The Gould Variations: Robert Hanks on Glenn Gould and the making of a cult. London: The Independent, 1994.

Gould, Glenn. Bach: The Goldberg Variations. New York: Columbia Masterworks, 1956.

Oswalt, Peter. Glenn Gould - The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.

Slate. ‘There and Bach Again: The revealing new release that pairs Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations.’ http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2002/10/there_and_bach_again.html (accessed 17 February 2014).

CBC Music. ‘Glenn Gould's Goldbergs: 1955 or 1981?’ http://music.cbc.ca/#/blogs/2012/9/Glenn-Goulds-Goldbergs-1955-or-1981 (accessed 18 February 2014).

WQXR Radio. ‘From the Vaults: Glenn Gould on Bach's Goldberg Variations’ http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/106202-vaults-glenn-gould-bachs-goldberg-variations/ (accessed 18 February 2014).

YouTube. ‘Glenn Gould: Bach Goldberg Variations 1981 Studio Video (complete)’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2YMSt3yfko (accessed 19 February 2014).

How Genre Shapes a Poet’s Voice

24th February, 2014

What is genre? Genre, in terms of prose and music, is a category, which will tell you just exactly what type of material you are about to engage with. However, when the term transitions to poetry, we see that while retaining a similar meaning, the term defines what type of poem the work will manifest itself as in terms of form, with themes such as romance, religion etc. usually tied to a specific genre. This helps the composing poet to choose what form suits he or she will feel suits their work best, i.e., what type of versing will deliver the poet’s desired impact on the reader. This will ultimately result in shaping the voice that the poet is orating with. Once established, most poets will stick to a specific genre that works for them, but outlying cases have lead to the establishment of a new sub genre (such as the Shakespearean Sonnet). I intend in this essay to expand on the above points, showing how genres have helped

Base Details

Siegfried Sassoon’s poem Base Details is a satirical short poem that doesn’t necessarily abide by any known format, but rather borrows certain elements (perhaps inadvertently) from other genres, mainly the Shakespearean sonnet. The poem is versed ABABCDCD with a rhyming couplet, missing out on a final quatrain which would complete the Shakespearean format. The poem has been perceived as “clever” and “hard hitting” (Campbell, 138) for it’s apt use of alliteration (“puffy petulant face”) and ironic contrasts, as Sassoon attempts to (and succeeds in) attack senior officers, the pencil pushers who organized battlefields and shouted orders while hidden behind their rank “guzzling and gulping in the best hotels”. These men show display nothing that would warrant the ranks they hold, especially given their detailed physicality brought on by the onset of gluttony and ignorance. So, how does the form of the poem aid in the transmission of Sassoon’s antipathy? The rhyme scheme works wonders in creating a succinct and hard hitting statement with each two line phrase, creating (when phrased right) an air of ignorance and evident satire that was Sassoon’s aim from the beginning. The final two lines, the rhyming couplet, strike the reader with a sense of true abhorrence, creating in our minds an unknown hostility towards these men who would simply forget about the world of war and “toddle safely home” having let the youth die in masses like sheep. Commenting on the final lines of the poem, Sassoon’s personal diary reads “you will guzzle yourself to the grave and gas about the great war, long after I am dead will all my promise fulfilled”, hinting that the public are just as ignorant, in our understanding of how conflict is waged and the seriousness of the loss of men, rather than treating figures of the dead as a simple statistic. The genre of the poem, I believe, succeeds in shaping the voice of the poet, provoking the reader to attempt to understand the ignorance of those simply sitting behind desks drinking coffee.

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ is one of the most well known poems to emerge from the romantic literary period. It is a sonnet but, keeping with the theme of the essay in question, it is an irregular sonnet. The irregularity arises not in the form, but rather in the rhyme scheme and punctuation, which doesn’t match the sonnet scheme at all. It’s also worth noting that it is written in iambic pentameter, borrowing again from Shakespearean form. Despite the evident peculiarities, the sonnet is forceful and authoritative when read. The title of the poem provides immediate food for thought, provoking the reader to wonder what is ‘Ozymandias’ and read on further. The sonnet leads us through a powerful oration by Shelley, “I met a traveller from an antique land”. This first line ends with the word “antique’ hanging in the air, a powerful word making us think that the world within the poem is old, aged, valued and exotic. What follows is the traveller’s description of the sights, “vast, trunkless legs of stone/Half sunk, a shatter’d visage”. The description of the sights is extremely vivid, featuring Shelley using robust language to push the meaning of the poem, despite the simple and understandable description. This continues through the verse, “Whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”. The fantastic use of expression and imagery entice the reader/listener to pause and really absorb the line, which convey the sheer cold aggression and authority of Ozymandias. The sculptor is then introduced, “whose passions read which still survive”. We are drawn into the ironic picture that Shelley has provided us with, that the careful observations of the sculptor survived through lifeless prints on stone, while the world in which we had been invited to gaze upon in such a disparaging manner has suffered at the hands of the hourglass, now slave to the “lone and level sands”. It doesn’t take a lot to see how genre helps Shelley evoke the tone of this Sonnet; the form suits the word setting perfectly, with the versing leaving the reader hanging onto the last world of each line as we are introduced to this ultimately fruitless reign, leaving nothing remaining bar decay and wreck. The juxtaposition between Ozymandias’ claims and reality can be seen as a metaphor for the permanence of art over all, with the endurance of the sonnet itself supporting this. Back on point, the sonnet form brings the reading of the work alive, attending to the craft of its simple construction.

Anthem for doomed youth Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is perhaps one of the most well known poems to have emerged from World War I. The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, following typical form in this instance. The sonnet is, in essence, written in lamentation for those whom Owen saw die in battle, and is therefore based on Owen’s personal experience rather than a general account of battle. Once again, we see a slight irregularity in the sonnet in the sense that it steers away from the stereotypical Petrarchan sonnet themes, such as love/religion etc. (while still retaining elements these aspects in minor respects) and instead takes the route of an elegy. Many as Owen’s breakthrough work considered this sonnet. Throughout the Sonnet we can see death, youth and nature scattered with hints of religion surfacing as a mix of themes. It is worth noting that Owen structured the rhyme scheme to emphasise key ideas that he wanted the reader to understand, utilising the genre to its apogee. The poem is structured around two questions; the octet opens with “What passing bells for these who die as cattle”, while the sestet begins with “What candles may be held to speed them all”, with the second question acting as the sonnet’s turn. The octet revolves largely around the sounds of battle; the “passing bells” can be interpreted as funeral bells, which are absent because these poor souls will have no funeral to celebrate their lives. The “monstrous anger of the guns” sees the personification of the weapons, perhaps they could be perceived as angry people or even deities? The onomatopoeia and alliteration present suggest fear and stress among the soldiers. Owen was, prior to the composition of the sonnet, planning on becoming a priest (bbc.co.uk). This may clarify the idea of “mockeries” from church bells, the “demented choirs” of bombs, and the sound of bugle horns, which are usually heard at a funeral. The sestet attempts to answer the issues raised in the octet. There may not be time for proper celebration, but the noise subsides, and the memories of those lost are in the back of “patient minds”. The typical veil worn by a woman at a funeral is replaced by the whiteness of their faces upon their realisation, that from now on they will live in this world alone, “drawing-down” the blinds unaccompanied each night. The genre of the Petrarchan sonnet provides Owen with the rhyming scheme he needs for the sonnet to achieve its scintillating status. Again, we see genre aiding in the vocalisation of the poet’s intended reaction.

It’s clear to see that a poet needs to find the right genre to provide the framework for his or her work. It’s hard to imagine a poem like Mahon’s Antarctica as a sonnet; it just wouldn’t provide as heavy-hitting an impact as it does as a villanelle. To fully convey what is desired, the right genre must chosen. A poet and his/her preferred genre truly shape what it is that the poet wants the world to know.

Bibliography

Campbell, Patrick. Siegfried Sassoon: A Study of the War Poetry. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc, 1999.

Moliken, Paul D. Ed. Discovering Genre: Poetry. Clayton Delaware: Preston House, Inc, 2007.

Author N/A. http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/articles/2005/03/16/wilfred_owen.shtml. BBC, 2005. Web. 23 February 1014.

Simcox, Kenneth. http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/poetry/anthem-for-doomed-youth. Wilfred Owen Association, 2000. Web. 24 February 2014.

Raga Megh; Typifying Classical Indian Music?

4th April, 2014

What is a Raga? Contributing to Encyclopedia Britannica, Bruno Nettl defines a Raga as the “classical music of India”, a “melodic framework for improvisation and composition”. In an interview with Grammy Nominated artist Anoushka Shankar, she described Raga as a “melody form that’s based on a scale that has anywhere from five to seven notes”. Popular Dictionary producer and online database compiler Merriam Webster went as far to categorise it as having modal like qualities, contradicting Shankar perceives it to be. So what is it really? In this essay, an attempt will be made to define the concept of a Raga, working on the popular Raga Megh, recorded by Shivkumar Sharma, as a Case Study.

To fully understand the concept of a Raga, we must look at the origins of the form. Every form and genre that had emerged has usually been the byproduct of a significant event in the respective genre/form’s culture and society. This comes from Bruno Nettl’s investigation and further research into Alan Merriam’s theory that music is an integral part of culture, rather than something that occurs alongside culture (also called the enumerative approach). The origins of Raga are in grey territory. An online article by Indian art and culture artisans details how what was considered to be a raga may have changed over the centuries, the earliest being named after deities and played at rituals in celebration and hope of receiving gifts. We can assume then that an ancient raga would be comparable to many budding cultures and societies at the time, who would conduct similar rituals. But, as the centuries past, the raga evolved along with the country. India today can be described a country that unifies the diversities of art and languages contained within, to the point where the languages spoken at the north and south of the country are in no way related. British colonisation resulted in the middle class and upwards being trained at English speaking universities, making English the most widely spoken language in Indian politics and the unofficial language of the bourgeoisie. To be Indian today is to be a part of their web of culture, composed of everything from a common ground regarding religion to sacred practices to dress etiquette and stretching to music. While its structure remains unaltered, he raga has, in a sense, conformed to the ‘new Indian’ culture. Improvisation has been used to expand on the given structure (as can be heard in Raga Megh, seven minutes in) through modes of backing and audience demand. Given the low social status of musicians throughout the country, the emotional drive and communication that is supposedly conveyed by the Raga affords the musicians involved a great sense of respect from the audiences.

So, given the background and contextualisation of the Raga, how do the Indian people perceive and react to the music being played? What does a Raga, more specifically Raga Megh, make them feel? What does it mean to its audience, and how does it communicate any potential meaning? If Martin Clayton’s hypotheses are to be believed, then this ‘meaning’ that we might come to understand in a traditional sense of the word may not be what we perceive, but rather an attachment to the senses of means, ie a sense of security, comfort, apathy etc. He also theorised that, regarding a more conventional sense of the word, meaning must be discovered by the individual rather than being prescribed by the instrumentalist captaining the piece. This is especially true with regards to the Raga, wherein the piece is building on the foundation, the same foundation that the piece will always begin upon, and take a completely new direction each and every time it is performed due to the improvisational nature of the Raga structure. In this regard, we can turn to James Gibson, who states with regards to music that meaning “is what people can can make sense of music”, that personal significance varies by how the piece sways the listener. Personally, when I listen to the Raga, I am reminded of my ambition to travel the world and what goals I must accomplish to achieve such a feat, therefore making this piece inspirational to me with regards to personal meaning. When it comes to the conveyance of meaning through performance, the visual is just as important as our mental experiences. Watching an instrumentalist perform gives us a true sense of what the performer him/herself is feeling which in turn conveys to us a sense of what meaning the performer is trying to communicate to the audience. With regards to the visual performance of Raga Megh, Shivkumar Sharma performs with his eyes closed while settling into a groove, so to speak. His movements may encourage the audience to engage with the performance by potentially dancing (albeit on a lesser scale to traditional dancing) which would call on elation and content thoughts, ultimately resulting in a sense of meaning though aesthetics. This may vary, of course, from performance to performance given the sandbox within which a different mood or theme may be conveyed through each individual performance.

As stated previously, one of the most prominent features present in a Raga, and certainly in Raga Megh, is improvisation. The Raga provides a foundation upon which the performer must build on, which may potentially lead to a final layered and spliced performance which may not bear much resemblance to the initial source material. In many ways given this respect, we can draw comparisons between the the Raga form and improvised Jazz. Jazz is often referred to as lacking any sort of form, but initial structure in jazz, much like the Ragas, is minimalistic. This leaves room for thematic and idea development which leads to improvisation, very much like the ideal Raga performance. Bjorn Alterhaug writes in his paper on jazz improvisation of a musical philosophy and improvisational technique created by saxophonist Ornette Coleman called Harmolodics. Harmolodics is defined by Coleman as “[the allowance] of a person to use a multiplicity of elements to express more than one direction,” and that “The greatest freedom in harmolodics is human instinct,” (Litweiler, p 148.). This touches heavily on the Raga form, wherein freedom is granted to the performer to steer the direction of the piece in the desired direction. This application is heard multiple times with the performance of Raga Megh, which features a gradual layering on top of the initial material and begins to intensify after a minute, then after seven minutes the performance transforms into a much more lively and energetic piece.

On Shakespeare’s Henry V; exploring the complex relationships within and between the four nations of the United Kingdom

21st October, 2014

This past September saw the one of the biggest events occur with regards to the existing relationships between the UK its other surrounding countries since the 1916 Rising. The existence of the Scottish independence referendum was a reminder of the tender agreement existing between both which harked back to the formation of UK; that the two monarchies of Scotland and England had existed during the middle ages and that both respective countries were never in mutual agreement with each other. This lead to both fighting a series of wars that lasted throughout the duration of the fourteenth century, until James I of England and James VI, King of Scots would enter into a dynastic union (the ‘Union of the Crowns’) in 1603. This union still hadn’t pleased James of England, himself wanting imperial ruling over all of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, but Scotland would remain a sovereign state. (CITE) Obviously, the state of relations between the two countries proved to be unsatisfactory in the eyes of the Scottish public, returning to the matter centuries later to once again take up arms (albeit in a political and non lethal stance) and once again attempt to distance itself away from the UK. This political war was characteristic of any other; the English were adamant that Scotland remain part of their coalition states and in the place of warriors and battlefields were MPs and debating chambers, with the English opposition potentially gaining the upper hand through biased media and bad press (CITE). Ultimately due to comfortability and fear of change the English prevailed. This relationship is complicated; Scotland may want to remove itself from the UK, but they also need them to function as a complete society. It’s just one of the many complex relationships within and between the four nations of the UK that exist today and that have existed for centuries. So, in the midst of all this political impedimenta, how can we slot a famous playwright such as Shakespeare into this equation?

To pull this into a Shakespearean context, we must look at Shakespeare’s life in consolidation with the timeline of the British monarchy and the circumstances surrounding both Britain and its bordering nations. At the age of Forty Shakespeare was in his prime. He had produced classical and Italianate comedies which proved to be a mixture of witty romance and lively merrymaking. But late 1594 brought with it the beginning of a new conflict to the Kingdom of England; Gaelic chieftain Hugh O’Neill had been riled by the conquest of Ireland at the hand of Elizabeth the First and had rallied the other Irish clans who were oppressed by the English, provoking the beginning of the Nine Years War (CITE). It was at this time that Shakespeare began to write slightly different compositions, switching his focus from the Elizabethan reflections (seen in the likes of The Merchant of Venice) to a more nationalistic (albeit subtle) form of writing based around historical figures and English Kings. This evolution of writing impacted the structure of his works; characters became more layered and intricate and comedic scenes began to blend in more serious connotations (CITE). This development may have been partially a result of Shakespeare’s own mental development, but undoubtedly it is also a direct response to the context of the time in which he was living. In particular, Henry V can be seen as a complete propaganda piece meant to stir spirits and rattle the English public into supporting the country’s cause or even into enlisting to the ranks of the Queen’s army to help deal with the Irish problem. Here, I intend to explore the impact that Henry V may have had on the English public at the time as well as try and see how Shakespeare brings to light the complex relationship that England had with its neighbouring countries (as mentioned above).

To have had any sort of impact on the English public in the respects mentioned above Shakespeare would have had to ensure that Henry V was riddled with patriotism, and it doesn’t fail on this front. Through the cleverly written speeches included in the play spoken by the titular character, Henry V falls in very close with the category of state propaganda; the Saint Crispin’s Day speech in particular reaches out to all walks of English life and offers them an equal, significant place in the country, while potentially dispersing a subliminal mental note that victory can be achieved through unity: “From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember'd- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” (Shakespeare, Henry V 4.3.58-60). The play plays on the idea that concept of a united “band of brothers” is seemingly the ‘secret weapon’ that the English possess; despite facing an uncertain yet unfavourable outcome before the battle of Agincourt (and after Henry himself had his spirit crushed after coming to the realisation that his is indeed only a man), their forces are victorious. It should also be noted that given that this is one of the final moments in the play (being part of the penultimate act) this is one of the lasting moments that would have remained in the minds of the audience (whether this was premeditated or not is open to discussion).

This undercurrent of unification is laced throughout the play with the constant overtones and illustrations of war and violence, which (apart from offering the play its plot device) may stir the blood of the audience as well as causing the play the echo out with a nationalistic fervour, so much even that it is all too easy to forget that the English are the ones who are invading France, and that the French people are suffering for their innocence. This is once again a result of Shakespeare’s speech writing, which dubs the English invaders as ‘noble warriors’ getting ready for battle, not taking into account the lives of the innocent people who are about to be slaughtered at Harfleur;

“Once more into the breach dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our British dead”/ “But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard – favour’d rage” (Shakespeare. Henry V 3.1.1-8)

It is not entirely impossible here that Shakespeare may have been trying to highlight the grotesqueness of war and its implications; almost directly following the siege of Harfleur we see our titular character make yet another short speech which calls on a much darker and evil tone: “The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart, In liberty of bloody hand shall range With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.” (Shakespeare. Henry V 3.3.3-8)

I’d like, at this stage, to consider the possibility that this play may have been perhaps commissioned by a third party on behalf of the state, and that up until and after this point we indeed see Shakespeare at work but not on a personal level, rather producing a piece of propaganda to encourage and focus public attention on the matters at hand overseas. If this were to be true, this brief but impactful scene could be Shakespeare’s own opinion escaping through the proverbial cracks, perhaps even put there intentionally so as to add an air of uneasiness and provoke the audience to think, to briefly ground them back to reality away from the nationalist tone to see the pointlessness of such a siege and think about it’s implications. At this stage, there must have been an enormous amount of people with Irish connections residing within England, whether they were relatives or just acquaintances. If this consideration proved to be true, and for arguments sake let’s say it is, such propaganda would attempt to alienate those separated by the stretch of sea that connect the two countries.

Perhaps, even, the play may be entirely based around Shakespeare’s critique of then-monarch Elizabeth the First. In his paper Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion, Stephen Greenblatt refers to the representation of Henry V as an ambivalent representation of a ‘stage machiavel’, painting him as a character that has the cunning ability to mask the use of deceit, malice and duress with a fabricated illusion that he is a character of utmost earnestness. When compared to the monarch on the throne at the time, such a description is not unlike that of Elizabeth the First, who too used her position and apparent muliebrity to instigate the completion of the first British Empire by first targeting Ireland as a conquest point. If the character of Henry V was indeed intended to mimic that of Elizabeth the First, it is possible that, like the pro-Scotland voters of today, Shakespeare was not in favour of a congruent British Empire and instead in favour of the individuality of each separate country. Perhaps as a British citizen he may have preferred to be inspired by outlying countries, such as Scotland from which he drew inspiration for Macbeth, Denmark where he drew inspiration for Hamlet and Italy from where he drew inspiration for Othello and The Merchant of Venice among others.

To return to my initial argument, I still believe that Henry V exists primarily as a piece of propaganda. To further support this, we can look at the modern adaptations of the play and, just as we can consolidate the time of Shakespeare’s composition of the work with a point on the timeline of the Nine Years War, we can too consolidate the release of modern adaptations with similar events over the course of the last century. 1944 brought the release of Laurence Olivier’s adaptation which tied in well with the tail end of the second world war, meanwhile 1989 brought the release of Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation which also happened to fit into the timeline of the Vietnam war. Both were on-screen film adaptations, meaning that for the first time the work was no longer confined the restrictions of a single theatre.

This would seem quite appropriate, given the argument at hand; if the production were to serve the same purpose that it was created for, it would now need to be seen by multiple parties which were involved in the conflicts at hand. Whether or not the productions were again created with the purpose of being used as propaganda is something that can be interpreted as mere hearsay but given the convenience of the timelines and its potential original purpose this is certainly something that should be subject to discussion.

To return to the question at hand, we need to ask draw similarities between circumstances existing surrounding the September 2014 referendum and the Nine Years War, focusing in on the shaky foundations that exist between England and her neighbouring countries. Regarding the topic of war, it is of some significance that we ask how is it justified here? Obviously, regarding the referendum, the justification of the political ‘war’ was the impact the result would have on the economy, public image of the UK and stance it held as a political superpower. Regarding the Nine Years War, it is not so easy to sympathise with its cause. The golden era of Elizabeth had provoked the emergence of avarice among the British Monarchy, prompting the beginning of the British Empire. But the question remains; how can war be justified, especially when England is so dependant on her bordering countries for natural resources, goods and services? Henry V also features the same situation with the English conquest of France, yet there is no valid reason to invade France, there was no provocation. It is possible that the key motivation for these acts is recognition. It is apparent that Henry thinks of himself as a being of heightened status, going so far to say that others were worthy of fighting alongside me. Yet before the battle of Agincourt he is brought back down to earth when he hears the opinions of his men on him, “I thinke the King is but a man, as I am” (Shakespeare, Henry V 4.1.1952). This ultimatum can be tied to all three of the present situations; It is fair to say Elizabeth wanted to leave her mark on history, to be recognised for her actions, and she did exactly this by being one of the most ferocious monarchs England had at her helm. Similarly, the Scottish pro-independence parties were undoubtedly looking to be recognised as the ones who broke the mould after such an extended period of rule under a foreign monarch, but failed as a result of taking a more human approach in contrast to older methods.

Whatever way you interpret the deeper meaning of Shakespeare’s Henry V, it would be frivolous to think that the composition of the play was not influenced by the historical context surrounding England at the time. To analyse the work in its most basic form, Henry is presented as a heroic, motivated, commoner pleasing, chivalric hero and is described by Naomi McAreavey as being the ‘ideal English King’.

Aesthetic concepts and main structural devices used in Minimal Music.

28th November, 2014

Minimal music has been one of the most unusual yet successful styles of art music to emerge from the last century. To describe minimal music as art music is probably one of the most appropriate ways of labeling it; minimal music takes its name from the minimalist movement that first arose in around the 1960’s which was originally tied to works of art and design produced by western sculptors and artists (Karolyi). These craftsmen would strip back their work to its bare minimum; rather than create intricate and elaborate works they would now use as little materials, handiwork and a much less complex structure (McLaughlin). Around the same time, composers were facing a crisis of late Romantic art music; new ways of organising musical structures were being sought after as well as there being an impetus to search for alternatives within the general concept of tonality. Intrigued by the work of minimalist artists, young American composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass among others would find themselves extrapolating and ultimately emulating this methodology as they applied it to their own craft, the fruits of which were unlike any compositions which had preceded those before it. Limiting themselves to the most basic features of musical composition, this evolution (or, more appropriately, devolution) of music would see a return to the basic foundations of music, featuring basic and obvious tonalities, unyielding rhythmic patterns and a lack of intricate harmonies. Minimal music can be considered significant due to its contrast with the periods of music that preceded it. Minimal music was non-telogical, that is to say it was not goal directed; there was no climatic points or definite cadential phrases which had been developed throughout the course of the romantic period. Motivation and emotion were almost completely absent, meaning that essentially the music was meaningless, that there was no reason for the pieces existence apart from being composed solely for the purpose of being listened to. Where rhythm would provide formal structure to preceding music, it was a random/optional inclusion in this case. This was music stripped bare of all that had been built upon it before, it was composed to be listened to at the leisure of the listener without purpose of cause. Timothy Johnson describes minimalism as a continuous formal structure with an even rhythmic texture and a simple harmonic pattern, while Anvo Poirt describes it as music weighted towards melody delivery (Marx 2014). In this essay I intend to explore the spread of minimalist music, investigating its aesthetic concepts, the devices employed by its composers in its composition and to highlight some of the key works to surface from the movement’s peak, which are still relevant today. In spite of the knowledge we have that states that minimalist music first surfaced in around the 1960’s, traces of it can be followed back to a young composer, La Monte Young, whose work contained qualities observed later on in minimalist works.

While attending Berkeley University, Young’s work in the 1950’s focused on a reduction of elaborate chains of notes, instead focusing on sustained chords between trios of stringed instruments (Morgan) (such as his Trio For Strings composed in 1958 for cello, violin and viola). This style of rhythmic reduction is used as a tool to help enunciate the slight alterations between individual chords and notes. This would mark the first step into the world of minimalist music. Young’s work would act as a domino effect on composers, earning him the moniker the ‘leading figure of minimalism’s earliest age’ (Morgan). It is interesting to note, however, that this first step may not have been motivated by the minimalist art movement, but rather as a means of self expression for Young. The excerpt below from an interview with Young challenges this, hinting that the form of ‘Trio’ may have been inspired by nature rather than a want to strip the music back as with bona fide minimalists that would following; I think that this kind of sense of time has to do with getting away from the earthly sense of direction which goes from birth to death, in other words, like developmental form, and has to do with static form and moving up into, by up I mean like vertically, as in Vertical Hearing, moving, then, up through the sound of a chord or the sound of a tamboura or the sound of an interval that’s sustained, using this to create a drone state of mind as I described. By using this to create a drone state of mind, it provides a means toward achieving a state of meditation or an altered state of consciousness that can allow you to be more directly in touch with universal structure and a higher sense of order. (Young, 2002)

Attending University with Young was another young composer named Terry Riley. Riley was a close classmate of Young, and where Young may have been the first composer to perhaps unintentionally instigate the minimalist music movement, Riley can be considered to be one its first composers, and ultimately a pioneer of the movement. Riley composed with (at the time) an unusual style, which heavily focused on repetition of rhythmic and melodic divisions (Morgan). Examples of this can be seen in his 1964 composition, ‘In C’, Here, Riley utilizes exactly fifty three repeating divisions of separate melodies composed in C major on a single sheet of manuscript paper. The intention of the this was to enable the piece to be performed by any single performer or ensemble of performers, and that each performer would begin playing the first of the divisions and eventually move on to the next, playing at their own tempo and dynamic of choice. This in turn gave rise to a very rich set of contrapuntal harmonies and no solid texture (Riley). This compositional device allows for an almost unlimited manner of performance, as the composition is written without restrictions, and may be responsible for instigating the idea that repetition should be intrinsically linked with minimal compositions. Now-infamous minimalist composer Steve Reich who, in his composition ‘Clapping Music’, uses a similar style of composition driven by repetition (albeit utilising a slightly altered method to the style seen here) would later employ a similar compositional device basing itself on this idea of repetition. It is worth noting that Riley had initially composed the piece to be played without any sort of pulse, leaving the performers involved to perform with abandon and not adhere to any rhythmic centre. Steve Reich, who was a member of the first ensemble to perform ‘In C’, was worried that despite the intention of stripping back music to its minimum, a lack of any pulse could detrimental. Reich put his thoughts to Riley who was willing to co-operate with Reich, ending up with Reich adding a pulse in the form of a piano looping the note ‘C’, which he is not credited for in the composition (ABC RN, 2014). Steve Reich is without doubt the most recognizable minimal composers to arise out of the minimalist movement. Reich is best known for employing his own compositional device throughout his work, which he called phase shifting. Phase shifting is the result of a domino effect experienced by Reich after meeting Terry Riley, and that he was “pointed the way towards a more organised and consistent kind of pattern-making with highly reductive means” (Obendorf ,2009, P48). Phase shifting is a sort of form that revolves around the idea that two identical melodies/rhythms can, with one slight alteration, become a contrapuntal weaving composition. This is instigated by having one of the twinned melodies lapsing or ‘phasing’ either behind or ahead of the other by a slight rhythmic interval. Aesthetically, this creates a consistent and continuous contrapuntal weave that never really feels that it’s going to come to a resolve (ie a resolving cadential point) due to the disjointed nature of the pieces. This method is peppered through Reich’s catalogue of compositions. (Morgan). The first piece to employ this phasing technique was not necessarily a composition on paper, but rather a accidental means of experimentation by Reich. With ‘It’s Gonna Rain’ in 1965, Reich attempted to reproduce a seamless synchronisation of tape loops of a Black American Sermon recording, but due to technical imperfections found in the tape recorders he was using the recordings fell out of synch, with one tape either falling ahead or behind of the other. Rather than attempt to correct this error, Reich exploited it, and as a result he was now able to explore any and all possible harmonies caused between the tapes (Obendorf, 2009, P48). Refining this method, he would apply it to live performances which he labelled ‘painstaking’ as they were “structurally so complex that no attempt was made to notate repeats or achieve synchronisation in what was written down” (Obendorf, 2009, 49). His other compositions including ‘Clapping Music” and “Piano Phase” expose this refined idea; the two lines of melody would start off identically, with one remaining the same throughout the duration of the piece, while the other would phase shift multiple times after a set amount of repetitions only to arrive at it’s original position again by the time the piece had concluded. Despite Reich’s involvement with Riley, he was derisive about labelling himself a pioneer of minimalism (albeit acknowledging “that was certainly the attitude”, (Obendorf, 2009, P49), and he instead accredits the rise and spread of minimal music as a side effect of eastern music being brought to and played in the western world, mentioning that foreign ensembles such as Javanese and Balinese gamelans were brought to universities and shown to students provoking an interest in how sounds could be achieved from such an instrument with such a limited range (ABC RN, 2014). At a live performance of Reich’s Piano Phase in New York City in 1967, Philip Glass would be left with a lasting impression of minimalism which would completely refocus his methods of composition. Glass began to work closely with Reich on melodic patterns, but where Reich focused on phasing, Glass had a different direction in mind. Towards the tail end of the sixties, Glass began to develop a new technique which entailed the expansion of basic melody lines via supplemental rhythmic processes. Through this process, the now-expanded melodic form would often contract and recede to its original position. This process can be seen in Glass’ composition ‘Strung out’ wherein both additive and subtractive rhythmic processes can be heard. These processes are very similar to diminutions (such as Skips/Leaps) seen in classical compositions, but in this case the composition completely revolves around the idea of transforming the basic idea/motif rather than embellishing the melody (Morgan, 1991, 431). Through his exploration of minimalist ideas, Glass also wished to revitalise what he considered to be old fashioned opera. Glass wanted to reshape operatic form, to make it “a more ceremonial, non-narrative, and ritualistic music theater” (Morgan, 1991, 432). Between 1795 and 1983, Glass penned three operas around these elements, “Einstein on the Beach”, “Akhnaten” and “Satyagraha”. Of all these, ‘Einstein on the Beach’ showcases these features the most, and is intended to be told and shaped through a non narrative structure, instead focusing on aesthetics and being told through a continuous stream of music (composed by Glass) and elaborate visuals that were associated with Einstein. Through this method, Glass wished to bypass what he considered to be “conventional narrative” and create an enigmatic setting for the audience. (Schwartz, 1996, 130).

Bibliography

Karolyi, O (1996) The Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams in Modern American Music: from Charles Ives to the Minimalists. London: Cygnus Arts. McLaughlin, J (1963) Untitled. Los Angeles: Tamarind Lithography Workshop. P. Morgan, R (1991) A Return to Simplicity: Minimalism and the New Tonality in Twentieth-Century Music, New York: W.W. Norton. Young, L. (1958). Trio for Strings. [Online] Berkeley, CA. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2K7n49soV8 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2014]. Riley, T (1964) In C. United States: s.n. Young, L. (2002). An Interview with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Schwarz, K. (1996). Minimalists. London: Phaidon. ABC RN, (2014). Interview with Steve Reich - Rhythm and Minimalism. [image] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFS8Ru27rqs [Accessed 28 Nov. 2014].

Obendorf, H. (2009). Minimalism. Dordrecht [The Netherlands]: Springer.

An analysis of a Clementi Rondo Movement

1st December, 2014

Having analysed the Movement by Clementi, I have initially assumed that the movement is a Rondo, but to discern what type of Rondo (and indeed how I came to this assumption) we must dissect the movement into its constituent parts. The score has been labelled accordingly to highlight the points mentioned below.

The movement begins in G major and opens with the presentation of a motif of sorts (a running semiquaver to crotchet pattern exposing the tonic to the dominant) that will keep reappearing throughout the movement. This rhythmic pattern continues through to the end of bar 15, after which we being to see some changes ahead. Assuming that this is a Rondo (and for large scale function labelling purposes) we will call this beginning A. This A theme can be itself divided into a 16 bar Musical Period; a division between antecedant and consequent can be observed midway through bar 8. The distinction between these is the lack of a close at the end of the antecedant (where there is one present at the close of the consequent) and the whole of the consequent melody line is played an octave below the antecedant. Both antecedant and consequent can similarly be divided into basic and contrasting ideas; these subdivisions occur midway through bar 4 and midway through bar 8. As previously mentioned, the first half of the 16th bar ends on a perfect cadence, indicating this particular phrase has come to a close (See Score). Assuming this is a rondo, we can call this theme the Refrain, and can fully expect it to appear again at multiple stages throughout the movement. The phrase is sectional and does not modulate.

Bar 17 brings with it a set of changes which clearly distance itself away from previous large scale function. To begin with, we have modulated to the dominant key of G which is D major (indicated by the onset of C#). We have also moved away from the bass clef to have both hands play treble. We open with a similar rhythmic idea to A which descends to two quaver rather then rising to a crotchet. There is no clear antecedant and consequent or consequent here, but rather a statement (bar 16) and repetition (bar 19) of an idea followed by a separate continuation/development beginning on bar 22, which follows the same introduction to the presented rhythmic idea followed by an prolonged cadence, continuing on through running scale patterns before finishing on a Dmajor chord, right before modulating back to the tonic key of G major in bar 26. The phrase ends midway through bar 28 with the reintroduction of the A theme motif. This prolongation and intrathematic function points that this phrase is a sentence. For labelling purposes we will call this phrase B.The phrase, though it has modulated, is still sectional as it does not modulate throughout the phrase.

Bar 28 sees the return of the A theme for the most part in its entirety, albeit with some changes. The consequent here is slightly developed further with the addition of a stretch of broken chord bassline beginning on bar 37 and lasting for the duration of the Consequent’s ‘basic idea’ section. There are no further changes, but the phrase is attached onto a linking phrase into the following section which I will discuss below. The end of the phrase is indicated by a perfect cadence at bar 43. For labelling purposes we will call this A1. Bar 44 introduces a new theme which can be seen as reminiscent of both A and B; the bass features an escalating passage not too dissimilar to the A motif while the treble line features a descending melody that could be seen as a callback to the opening B melody. While one would be tempted to label this a C theme, we cannot do so, as looking forward in the score we have a new C theme to deal with designated by a modulation to the tonics relative minor. Given this foresight, we can label this small phrase as a linking passage into this new C theme. This linking phrase, i’m assuming, is in the form of a sentential period, featuring an antecedant and consequent which can be subdivided into two sentences. The phrase ends on a perfect cadence in G major.

The end of this linking phrase is indicated on the score by double bar lines, but this would usually indicate the end of the movement in its entirety. Looking ahead, we can see that the following phrase which, given that it has modulated into the Tonic’s relative minor, we will label C ends with a Da Capo al Fine, indicating that we will return to the beginning of the piece to repeat A, B and A1 again as A2, B2 and A3 again with this linking phrase which will manifest itself as a Coda to end the piece. As this this form is shaping, it is now clear that we are dealing with a 7 part Rondo. The callback to the beginning of the movement would also suggest that not only is this a 7 Part Rondo, but it is also a Sonata Rondo; the A and B phrase akin to an exposition, the C section as a development and the return as a recapitulation before finishing on a Coda. We can also look begin to assume that the movement is tight knit, as we have up to now been given clear breaks, cadences and exposed to different themes clearly. The C theme begins in the Relative minor key of G major which is E minor. The theme here is completely new and feels unstable as inflections are made between relative keys (see score) periodically through a musical sentence before modulating back into Dmajor to present an altered version of the A theme. While there would be some temptation to label this as A2, its presence is brief and the rest of the C theme develops from the A motif over D major. This leads into a long prolonged cadence which never manifests itself before modulating back into G major (bar 108) in preparation for the return to the A theme for A2. This phrase is continuous, having modulated several times and not having any clear intra thematic function towards the end.

From here we are brought back to the beginning, where we are exposed yet again to the A and B themes in the form of A2, B1 and A3 extending into the linking section again which is now treated as a Coda. This exposes the movement as a 7 Part Sonata Rondo, which is tight knit. and strongly Sectional.

Pirate Jenny; a Close Listening

9th February, 2015

Nina Simone Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB__mz4KGC8 Steeleye Span Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvLYvZrFn4E Julia Migenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NX97SAUBqc

The song ‘Pirate Jenny’ is the result of a joint venture between Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Despite originating from Brecht and Weill’s “Threepenny Opera,” the song has been subject to different renditions from different artists who have put their own spin on it to make it their own.

In the context of the play, the song is a young maid’s plea for vengeance as she daydreams about becoming a pirate. Simone’s recording perhaps mirrors this initial meaning the most; her recording reflects the black slave era, and may be her cry for vengeance for those who suffered during that period. This is emphasised by the personalisation of the song (“what you want Nina?” - 4:30) and her imposing yet unvarying tone of voice throughout (NB 5:10). Combined with the slow, jazzy style, that the song is performed in, the song is easy yet uncomfortable to listen to.

In contrast, Steeleye Span’s cover of the song tends to reflect the word setting of the song, featuring a work-song style pulse and including instruments that would be typically associated with swashbuckler-esque compositions, combined with the band’s typical instrumentation. This version is paced much faster, a direct result of the driving rock beat, and potentially harks back to the work the maid would have carried out in the original story. Maddy Prior’s aggressive tone emphasises the lyrics, I feel, much more emphatically than Simone’s.

Migenes’ recording is probably the purest version of the song, as it comes from a film production of the original production. This version is orchestral, and greatly benefits from it. The woodwind is light, piercing notes and the low brass pulse create a melancholy-like effect which reflects the swashbuckling elements of the song. At 3:25 the percussion adds to the drama, almost reminiscent of programme music, and fits the the word setting appropriately. Similar to Steeleye Span’s through instrumentation, but the music follows the lyrics here where I feel Steeleye Span’s focused more on the music.

Kanye’s ‘Blood on the Leaves’; Classification and Deconstruction 18th February, 2015

As we focus on the advancement of our cultures throughout the 20th century, we see that the intrusion of technology significantly propelled the development of most aspects of these cultures, and the area of music was no different. According to Albin Zak, Professor of Musicology at University of Albany, the development of music in recent decades has been “stylistically dependant upon machinery” (Zak, 73), so much so that the recent histories of both musical style and technology can be linked together. Obviously, with the progression of technology came the advancements in recording equipment and techniques, which allowed for a new range of sounds surfacing in records as years progressed. In attempting to categorise and characterise these sounds, Zak presented the notion that all sound in songs can be divided into five separate ‘musical phenomena’ of sorts; musical performance, timbre, echo, ambience and texture. Through these categories, he hoped to identify the ‘sonic signature’ for each record: a stamp of sorts identifying the record’s unique sound, as a by-product of each record’s compositional process. Here, I will be examining the ‘sonic signature’ of Kanye West’s “Blood on the Leaves” (from his sixth studio album, Yeezus, in 2013) as I attempt to classify the song using Zak’s categories listed above.

When we talk about musical performance, the first thing we tend to think of is a live performance, and rightly so. In the past, recordings may have literally been the same performance you get as if you were listening to a musician live, but the case has dramatically changed since then. Now, the inscription process has expanded so much to allow for effects processing, such as overdubbing, whammy effect bars and pedals in an attempt to avoid sounding the same as other songs (Zak, 71). West’s track here is limited to his own voice, sampling, a sustained piano and a heavy, overdubbed low brass sound (questionably digital) and electronic drum with its bass amplified.

Timbre relates to the intonation and specifics of the sounds being produced. Timbre, on the surface, is literally relating to what the style of music we hear is, and this is called physical timbre. But timbre can also be applied to musical exegesis, in which we associate it with the symbolic properties of a sound (specifically relating to lyrics) called rhetorical timbre (Zak, 69). The timbre of the vocal line here is noteworthy; West utilises a processed, auto-tune effect on his own vocal line, making his voice sound mechanical and robotic, rather than natural or human. Also, at regular intervals, we hear the sampled voice of Nina Simone singing lines from her cover of Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’, which operates on a rhetorical basis highlighting the lyrics of the song. The presence of an electronic bass drum/snare is typical of West’s sound and this genre in general, and can be considered part of his ‘sonic identity’.

Echo relates to the replication of a sound which is played back directly after the original. This gives rise to a sense of temporal and spatial separation which may be heard during live performances, but had previously been unachievable through conventional recording methods of recording (apart from the use of an echo chamber) (Zak,75). New methods of achieving this were developed through the 1950/60’s with the creation of echo machines and then again near the end of the 20th century with the production of digital echo technologies allowing for more control over the effects. West utilises echo throughout, both on his own voice, the samples and the instrumentation making the track seem much more rich as well as sounding louder and more atmospheric.

Ambience originally related to the quality of the music’s sound in relation to the physical space that surrounds its point of origin. In recent decades this has changed to accommodate the ability to electronically manipulate music, as with echo and timbre. Ambience largely revolves around reverberation, which features prominently throughout music today (Zak, 76). This features on West’s track in relation to the heavy low brass line and electronic drum kits which enter in at approx. 1:06 (until 4:20 where the brass exits). The piano line arguably features reverberation but I’m more inclined to believe that it’s merely being sustained with an echo effect. Again, the drum line is typical of this artist and genre, creates a certain atmosphere that might encourage dancing.

Lastly we arrive at texture. Texture relates to the mix of effects and interactions between sounds, creating either a rich blend (polyphonic), a chordal mixture (homophonic), and quite rarely a single melody line (monophonic) (Zak, 81). I believe the overall texture of West’s song is polyphonic, given the different lines of melody, sampled vocals and chord backing being thrown around (heard clearly at 1:24). It must be noted that the texture found here will rarely be subject to replication when it comes to an acoustic live performance, as the electronic effects exist purely because of the technology available to do so on record. However, the blend here creates a sonic richness that makes the song pleasurable to listen to.

All in all, using Zak’s methodology, it can be determined that West’s song leaves a sonic signature that typifies it as a stereotype of its genre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

West, K. (2013). Blood on the Leaves. [CD] No Name Hotel (Paris), Studios de la Seine (Paris), Germano Studios (New York City), Gee Jam Studios (Port Antonio), Real World Studios (Box, Wiltshire), Shangri-La (Malibu): Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam.

Zak, A. (2001). The poetics of rock. Berkeley: University of California Press. Assigned Review - Ed Sheeran: X 25th February, 2015

A singer/songwriter who just also happens to play guitar; we’ve all seen it a hundred, hell, maybe even a thousand times. For most, it is unprecedentedly difficult to make a name for yourself in such a saturated market. Ed Sheeran, however, managed to accomplish this with his 2011 debut album, +. It wasn’t an outstanding album, to be sure, but rather than employ stereotypical acoustic guitar/vocal combos, he made use of a loop station to create some really exceptional tracks like “You Need Me”, “Small Bump”, and “Give Me Love” that oozed of creative potential.

As a follow up effort, in 2014 Sheeran exploded back onto radio with X’s first single “Sing”; A song that presents itself as a typical Ed Sheeran track, but with the addition of Pharrell Williams as producer lead to added hip hop beats and a welcome injection of large amounts of energy. It set high expectations for the album that would follow but, unfortunately for Sheeran, the main course wasn’t quite as appetising as the starter.

X often stays in Sheeran’s comfort zone, rather than pushing him to new/risky boundaries that “Sing” had. Sheeran has created a pleasant collection of songs here guaranteed to make teenage girls swoon; He sounds fantastic on the pretty melodies, but there’s a simplicity here that is frustrating; there’s nothing here that showcases him as the musician he has the potential to be. The only exception lies on the album’s deluxe edition, which sees the inclusion of track “I See Fire” (Sheeran’s original song for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) which incorporates a celtic folk vibe with his style, but nothing else on X stands out in this way.

Opening tracks “One” and “I’m A Mess” are a solid listen, but chances are you won’t remember anything about them once they’ve ended. ”Don’t” has a bite to it as Sheeran shame raps an ex, but by the time “Nina” rolls around you’ll already have succumbed to boredom, due to the the familiar sound of four chords and sappy lyrics constantly being thrown around. “Nina” does add a slight backbeat, but Sheeran’s guitar is still front and center in a menagerie of borderline bland tracks. Other songs “Photograph” and “Bloodstream” don’t buck the trend of boring love songs, but the latter makes use of the loop station in a fashion reminiscent of +. For all his talents, it’s makes one wonder it Sheeran had listened to the album in it’s entirety at all after it’s completion, as any reasonable person would think to themselves “this is a little much, no?”.

As X progresses, it’s hard not to become irritated by the fact that you’re listening to an artist with so much potential, but plays it safe with pretty little acoustic pop ditties intended on stealing One Direction’s audience. At this point, Sheeran’s music seems to be stuck in a loop, not unlike his music. Hopes that he might throw caution to the wind and make exciting, offbeat music are destined to decorate one of Sheeran’s albums, it’s just unfortunate that X is not it. Close reading and critical commentary of lines 847-899 of ‘The Franklin’s Tale’ 3rd March, 2015

‘The Franklin’s Tale’ is the twelfth tale chronologically appearing in Geoffrey Chaucer's long poem, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer interjects the Franklin’s tale to interrupt the unfinished Squire’s tale, albeit retaining structural similarities with the latter. ‘The Franklin’s tale’ is largely concerned with the subject of love, more specifically the gentilesse as a subcategory of this love, and deals with a ‘love triangle’ between the central characters, not unlike the Miller’s tale and the Knight’s tale which preceded it.

While this may be the prevalent theme here, love can appear in mutated forms, often expressing itself through submission and anger given the path the tale takes. The primary focus of the tale is the character Dorigan, wife to Averagus, and her emotional responses to the departure of her husband abroad. The most distinct scenes within the poem are seen during her lamentations/soliloquies regarding the concern she has for the safe return of Averagus (Boitani and Mann, 152). Here I intend on attempting to analyse her first critical lamentation, specifically approaching lines 847-899 through a closed reading analysis and critical commentary.

It is worth noting that the structure of this passage is ternary, consisting of a largely rhetorical diatribe by Dorigen aimed at an “eterne God” who has seemingly been failing to meet his expected role, which is to “leadest the world by certein governaunce” (The Franklins Tale, 865-866) (Chaucer, 347). This harangue is bookended by interjected, almost inverse images of glee and exuberance, “Hire to disporte upon the bank an heigh”/”They dauncen and they pleyen at ches and tables,” (The Franklin’s Tale, Lines 849, 898-899)(Chaucer, 347, 348). One ponders whether the employment of this format was considered by Chaucer to create a sense of tension within the text, as it is difficult to adjust mentally to the sharp angle at which the text turns, creating an almost uncomfortable atmosphere for the audience, especially to with regards to those who may have been devoutly religious. With regards to metre, keeping in mind the The Canterbury Tales are indeed a poem and not a novel, one would think that the poem follows a structure similar to but not completely adhering to iambic pentameter. Traditionally, an iamb will contain two syllables, of which there are five in a line, and given the similarities here I will settle on iambic pentameter.

The passage opens to a third person narrative (from the perspective of the Franklin, no doubt) describing Dorigen’s area of residence beside the sea, a feature that allowed her and her friends to ‘disporte’ at their leisure. In the broader context of ‘The Franklin’s Tale’, this passage is what immediately follows the departure of Averagus and, with such an opening line to resume with, one would be inclined to think that the absence of Averagus had not been as impactful as suggested in prior verses. This is supported by an overall tone of drollery from lines 847-851 (Chaucer, 347), creating the first ‘bookend’ mentioned earlier. Upon closer reading of lines 850/851 (Chaucer, 347), textual exegesis would suggest the the inclusion of the image of ‘a ship and barge seigh’ creates a sense of foreboding, acting almost like a trigger to bring us back to the image of Averagus at sea. Upon further reading, it is indeed revealed that her presence beside the sea brought as much pain as it did joy; the proximity of her castle to the sea and the constant sight of ships passing by would lead to her experiencing anxiety and distress over Averagus’ absence,

““Allas!" seith she, Is ther no ship, of so manye I se, wol bryngen hom my lord? Thanne were myn herte Al warisshed of his bittre peynes smerte.”

(‘The Franklin’s Tale’, lines 853-856)(Chaucer, 347)

It is hard to ignore the seeds of irony being sewn here; later on in the text, the sight of a distraught Dorigen by her friends would ultimately lead to the organisation of the solemnity wherein Aurelius, the up until then secret lover of Dorigen, confesses his feelings for her, leading to a domino effect that allows for the love triangle mentioned earlier.

What follows here can be considered to be an almost complete by-product of Dorigen’s own separation anxiety; as she contemplates the vessels sailing parallel to her residence, the begin to contribute to her seemingly growing sorrow, emphasised by her bemoaning at the thoughts that none of them hold the promise of returning Averagus to her at any time soon, “Is ther no ship, of so manye as I se, Wol bryngen hom my lord?” (‘The Franklin’s Tale’, 854-855)(Chaucer, 347), though if one did, it would free her heart of its "bittre peynes smerte” that she is experiencing. This association is potentially unavoidable, to a certain degree expected, but what follows is more irrational and unorthodox; while sitting in contemplation looking down from the cliffside, it seems that she almost intentionally focuses on the “grisly rokkes blake,” which seems to work herself into a ‘hysteria of terror’ (Daniels, 2) portrayed primarily outwards. This leads to the quaking of her heart to cuh an extent that she is now unable to stand, leading her to once again sit “pitously into the see biholde” (‘The Franklin’s Tale’, 863)(Chaucer, 347). Despite manifesting themselves as a by-product of nature, the rocks become a symbol to Dorigen which embodies all threats to her happiness (Daniels, 2).

Eventually, Dorigen's soliloquy reaches the point where her expression warps into into a metaphysical debate over the presence of the rocks below the cliff, labelling them as “werk unresonable” and a “foul confusion of werk than any fair creacion” (The Franklin’s Tale, 872, 869-70) (Chaucer, 347). It may be worth noting here that the ‘God’ that is alluded to throughout the passage is in reference to the Christian interpretation of the word rather than a pagan interpretation that might have been referenced in the rest of the tales. This is highlighted through syntax; “Eterne God, that thurgh thy purveiaunce,” (‘The Franklin’s Tale’, 865) (Chaucer, 347). This relates to Chaucer’s work in translating Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae, which questions why God abandoned human form only to be to be ‘deranged by the disorderly and arbitrary influence of Fortune’ (Daniels, 2). It could be argued that this complaint of sorts is Chaucer’s own religious criticism. It is no secret that Chaucer was a religious skeptic, and it has been a dominant theme throughout his works. This skepticism is highlighted in his texts by an ‘overwhelming sense of uncertainty, mutability, and doubt’ which, in turn, lead to thought provoking theist assumptions with focuses on the areas of skepticism and naturalism (Mohammad and Raji, 199). These features can certainly be observed in the diction used in this lament, which add fuel to the idea that this may be Chaucer ‘venting’ to his audience.

It is important to note that this passage is littered with rhetorical devices. According to Phyllis Hodgson, the passage is ‘more rhetorical’ than other passages in the sense that there is a more intricate register being spoken by Dorigen (Hodgson, 75). According to Stephen Knight, rhetoric devices used by the Franklin may have been previously constructed with the intent of making fun of him, but during Dorigen’s soliloquy-esque lamentation it is clear to us that rhetoric is being implied due to the obvious turn in style by the poem, now becoming elevated and perhaps even controversial, certainly due to Dorigen’s elevated conveyance of empathy and concern for Averagus (Knight, 22). This leads to her bravely provoking the higher power of this world, a “parfit wys God and a stable” (‘The Franklin’s Tale’, 871), in a monologue which highlights Chaucer’s careful employment of diction, defining Dorigen’s decorum to his audience,

“Eterne God, that thurgh thy purveyance Ledest the world by certein governance, In ydel, as men seyn, ye no thyng make. But, Lord, these grisly feendly rokkes blake, That semen rather a foul confusion Of werk than any fair creacion Of swich a parfit wys God and a stable, Why han ye wroght this werk unresonable?” (The Franklin’s Tale, Lines 865-72)(Chaucer, 347)

It is abundantly clear that Dorigen is experiencing an agitated sense of heightened emotions, and this soliloquy is essentially her channeling this buildup of feelings outwards. The crux of this soliloquy, "Why han ye wrought this werk unresonable?," decorates the end of her diatribe. This syntax here alludes to the idea that she might not yet in be able to bring herself to challenge God, yet later on in what may seem like a brash tactic, she challenges God to look on the waste of lost lives the rocks have caused, "bodyes of mankynde han rokkes slayn, al be they nat in mynde" . This last phrase ends anticlimactically, drawing attention to the the notion that her mind has been scattered due to her growing anxiety. Daniels argues that this is a “detailed account of a woman overwrought by frustrated expectancy” (Daniels, 2) and is intended to make us question whether Arveragus should have left Dorigen alone after such a brief period of time together, and then to have departed for such an extended period of time. One ponders if Chaucer is here attempting to capture the essence of the female psyche, given the consolidation of different expressions, but in doing so has instead presented the audience with the polar opposite of any sort of ‘hero’ figure that had been present in the tales that have preceded the Franklin’s.

Towards the end of the passage we are given a description of Dorigen’s friends attitudes towards her seaside soul searching. The friends, who are never named or characterised, eventually realise that walking by the sea, initially intended to be a distraction of sorts to keep Dorigen’s mind preoccupied, does not in fact serve it’s intended purpose, and instead of coming to further aid their friend they move off to “pleyen somwher elles” by rivers, springs and other "delitable" places (‘The Franklin’s Tale’, 897-899) (Chaucer, 348). Daniels speculates that Chaucer here is depicting the Franklin as a character who is seemingly ‘at a loss to know what aristocrats would do in reality’ (Daniels, 2), and unintentionally evokes to his listeners a sense that Dorigen’s friends are ‘under-occupied’, perhaps leading to excess levels of emotional expression.

After closed reading analysis and critical commentary, it is clear that the’ Franklin’s Tale’ presents us with an interruption from the molds we have seen that the other tales in The Canterbury Tales seem to have come from. The inclusion of deeper, psychoanalytical aspects of this tale paint it as more of a tragedy than the heroic tale we are used to, and despite the tale ending on a pleasant note (the surrender of Dorigen to Averagus by Aurelius, adhering to the overall theme of ‘gentilesse’), the unorthodox departure of Averagus after only just marrying Dorigen leads me to believe that Averagus was merely treating Dorigen as a commodity, potentially treating marriage something he wanted to have achieved before leaving. He seems to have no regard for Dorigen, who actually does have feelings for him, and he abandons her without any regard for what she might be feeling or may potentially experience. This obviously leads to a buildup of anxiety, leading to bouts of heretical outbursts and, ultimately, her secession into the hands of Aurelius after the supposed wizardry that makes the rocks ‘vanish’. Ultimately, I think the text is a menagerie of bad decisions, perhaps written by Chaucer purposely to make the Franklin look like an ignoramus, especially having interrupted the Squire’s Tale.

Works Cited

Boitani, Piero, and Jill Mann. The Cambridge Companion To Chaucer. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. London: HarperPress, 2012. Print.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Phyllis Hodgson. The Franklin's Tale. London: Athlone Pr., 1973. Print.

Knight, Stephen. The Chaucer Review, Vol. 4, No. 1. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 1969. Print.

Mohammad, Mahameed, and Al-Quran Raji. 'Chaucer's Religious Skepticism'. Nebula 8.1 (2011): n. pag. Print.

Classics of English Literature: essays by Barbara Daniels M.A., Ph.D.,. 'THE FRANKLIN'. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 Mar. 2015.

  The function of ‘Imagism’ and the direct treatment of the ‘thing seen’ in the poetry of Ezra Pound

6th March, 2015

What is imagism? Merriam Webster defines imagism as “a 20th century movement in poetry advocating free verse and the expression of ideas and emotions through clear precise images” (Merriam-webster.com). In layman’s terms, imagism was a poetical revolution that sought to do away with the vagueness and hypothetical elements that poetry had become sheathed in, all the while replacing those elements with a sense of clarity and simplicity. Imagist verse was written in a manner that was characterised by distinct, objective language and rhetoric, avoiding the incoherent and abolishing the need for complicated and intricate themes often associated with subject matters such as the supernatural or romance. As a technique, this may be perceived as a difficult template to follow, but imagism relied on the direct treatment of the ‘thing’ seen in the poem to carry it. As a literary device, the purpose of Imagism is clear, but, given its unorthodox nature and relative novelty,how well does it work when employed by a poet? To answer this question, we must turn to the pioneers of Imagism. The imagist credo was defined in circa. 1912 by poet Ezra Pound in co-operation with Hilda Doolittle, F.S Flint and Richard Aldington (kids.britannica.com), and to observe the success of the dissemination of Imagist poetry I will be dissecting three of the works of Ezra Pound, attempting to observe how well Imagism functions and how the “thing” to each poem operates as a vehicle to support the poem in question.

Pound has been called the “master entrepreneur” of the imagist movement (Hammer), and with good cause. Pound set the (admittedly then-nonexistent) bar in terms of Imagist work, a bar that until the works of Amy Lowell would be considered too high for consequential poets writing for the genre. This may be partly due to the ‘3 Rule’ format that Pound adhered to when composing his poetry; Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective, to use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome (Hammer).

In a Station of the Metro Undoubtedly, the shortest yet one of the most famous poems in modern poetry written under the imagist roof is Pound’s poem In a Station of the Metro. What’s interesting to note here is that saying the title already means you have recited a third of the poem. Keeping in mind that most imagist poetry is will strip the poem down to the bare minimum needed to convey what it wants, and as with most other poems, we can look on the title as a having a contextual function (poems with a similar titular function such as the work of Derek Mahon come to mind [A disused shed/ A chinese restaurant in Portrush etc]). So, as a locator, the title/first line places us in the underground metro stations of Paris, France. There has been debate as to whether the title actually stands within the poem as an included line or not, but given the Japanese haiku model that Pound researched in planning his work it is more than likely that the case is that it should be included as part of the poem. Again, given the short length of the poem, it is important to go through the lines with a fine toothed comb to uncover the true message it’s trying to convey; ‘“The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough,” (Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 267) Adhering to Pound’s rules, we need to discern what is the “thing” we are looking at? What is it that is being observed by the poet? Is there a metaphor being created? It may be the case that Pound is looking at the faces of those occupying the station, and then classifying them as the ‘petals’ we see later on, but we need to consider if he is actually incorporating both of these things in the poem or is there a metaphor at play? We are presented here with two images and no explanation. This is certainly not aided by the uncommon metrical arrangement it follows; the is lack of a rhyme scheme perhaps in an attempt to give each line its own identity. Bearing this in mind we can discern that the the two lines follow two separate thought processes. “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;”(Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 267) - dissecting this essentially tells us we are seeing (or rather the poet is seeing) the faces of the people underground, registering their initial impressions. The second process, one would think, is that he is conveying his mental interpretation of what he has seen into a metaphor; the faces are now petals. The employment of this metaphor contrasts with the traditional comparative similes associated with romantic poetry. The last ‘phrase’ overall, if you could call it that, sees a jump from the man made world (ie the metro) to the natural (flora/fauna via “petals”[Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 267]), as well as a shift from the present world to the metaphorical world. It should be noted that there is no context provided for this change of scenery, one would ponder what memory or past experience this has triggered for Pound. Looking back at the the second line, we see that Pound has incorporated the word “Apparitions” (Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 267) into the poem; rather than refer to the people physical entities, we are presented with the notion of undistinguished ghosts of sorts, perhaps leading us to believe that Pound doesn’t consider them to be occupying ‘real’ space. Blackburn theorised that there may be a correlation here between the underground and the ‘Underworld’ referred to by the great poets Dante, Homer and Virgil, which again would imply that Pound is employing the use of metaphor to convey his thought process (Blackburn). In the case of this particular poem, the use of metaphor and the stripped back lyrics of the poem help us focus on what the “thing” is; the image, as the primary unit of poetry (Hammer).

Canto I The ‘image’ provided a foundation for Pound’s poetry, becoming a ‘building block’ of sorts for much more elaborate templates, and this is highlighted in the Cantos that he wrote later on in his career. It is interesting to note the comparisons between the Cantos and ‘Station of the Metro’; on one hand you’ve got the shortest poem in modern literature, adhering to the simplistic structure of imagist poetry, and on the opposite edge of the spectrum we are presented with the Cantos, a set which together comprise the longest poem in modern literature. It’s easy to see the contradiction that arises here; with the dawn of the Imagist movement, Pound wanted to simplify the composition process to a point where you had the bare minimum of content to convey the message you wanted to put across, so what happened? Pound, commenting on the Cantos composition, says “I have begun an endless poem of no known category,” (Kuberski, 107) yet in commentary of the poem he describes is as “Phanopoeia,” (Kuberski, 108) which literally means ‘image-making’. This description is as accurate as it is confusing; the Cantos, when subdivided, become a collection of imagist poems, so to say that they belong to no specific category is technically incorrect.

“And then went down to the ship” (Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 279) - begins the longest poem in modern literature. Rather than establish a locale, we are introduced to the first Canto with an action. The reader is left without explanation as we are thrown the journey of Odysseus as he ventures to hell in search of the prophet Tiresias. Small parallels can be drawn here can be drawn to ‘Station of the Metro” in the sense that we are once again thrown into this idea of the Underworld. The poem can be interpreted as an homage of sorts to Homer, in the sense that this is essentially a translation of a passage from the Odyssee. The poem follows a series of images that are captured in an instance. On the composition of the first Canto, Pound has said “There is a start, descent to the shades, metamorphoses, parallel...All of which is mere matter for littlers Harvud instructors unless I pull it off as reading matter, singing matter, shouting matter, the tale of the tribe.” (Hammer)

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter If there is any poem written by Pound that illustrates the influence the Chinese culture had on him, it is ‘The River-Merchant’s Wife’. Pound writes here to convey his opinion on Chinese culture, specifically relating to those expressed regarding the notion of pre-arranged marriages. To contextualise, the Chinese have an arguably warped sense of what we consider as Love. Western cultures reply on Love as an independent emotion that eventually is expressed through our own ways, whereas the Chinese believe Love is an emotion that is expressed after marriage. This is a result of the largely patriarchal society that is present in China, leading to the common ideology that important decisions should not be left to the youth as they be reckless and unwise. Tackling the poem from an Imagist perspective, we can see the narrator of the poem, the young wife, expressing her sense of isolation and loneliness primarily through images, leading to a clear-cut, to the point form of poetry. While adhering to free-verse, Pound borrows from ideas of chinese writing. This is largely due to the the fact that Pound had realised that Chinese poets had been writing with the ‘image’ as the key principle in poetic composition. The opening stanza revolves around the image of the river-merchant’s wife in her youth, the youth becoming a central image within the poem as it continues. This is emphasised by the repetition of the word “playing”(Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 267) , complemented by the inclusion of natural elements that would be associated with children playing outdoors (“flowers”, “Plums”[Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 267]). The central image seems to be specific to each stanza, while the overall “thing” that we are dealing with seems to be maturity, given the experiences encountered by the wife throughout the poem. The third stanza revolves around the wife’s developing love for the husband, emphasised by the marriage vows be see the wife take and solidified by the triple repetition of the word “forever” (Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 267), while the fourth and final stanza deal with the notions of separation and aging. This is emphasised by the “sorrowful”(Axelrod, Roman and Travisano, 267) chirping of the monkeys in stanza four and the changing seasons [perhaps a pathetic fallacy] seen in the final stanza.

It is clear to see that, while perhaps unorthodox, the Imagist format is successful in delivering the the promise of a poetic work via the bare minimum needed to expose this promise. Works like “Metro Station” are exemplary of this, wherein the space of a mere three line there is an exposition of deep thought and theory all achieved through careful choice of syntax, a clever employment of metaphor and a lot of redrafting; Pound took the space of a year to perfect “Metro Station,” initially working off a thirty line construction (Hammer), yet managing to shave it down to the shortest, yet one of the most famous works to surface from not only the imagist movement but from the modern literary movement as a whole.

WORKS CITED

Axelrod, Steven Gould, Camille Roman, and Thomas J Travisano. The New Anthology Of American Poetry. Print.

Kuberski, Philip. A Calculus Of Ezra Pound. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992. Print.

Hammer, Langdon. 'Imagism & Ezra Pound'. 2012. Lecture.

Blackburn, Michael. 'Ezra Pound's "In A Station Of The Metro": Microlecture.'. 2013. Lecture.

Merriam-webster.com,. 'Definition Of Imagism'. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Mar. 2015.

Kids.britannica.com,. 'Imagism - Encyclopedia | Kids Online Dictionary | Britannica'. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Mar. 2015.

The Conducting Styles of Gustavo Dudamel 23rd March, 2015

“He leaps and bounces, often off the podium and onto the floor. It’s almost a dance performance. The feeling of the conductor as a conduit for the music is tangible, and the musicians watch him intently” (Steward, 2006). These are the words of a Telegraph journalist describing the impossibly flamboyant, yet completely enthralling conducting style of Venezuelan conductor, Gustavo Dudamel. Dudamel, now aged 34, is a well decorated, well recognised and very much invested in his field of work. Previously acting as an honorary conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and still the current conductor of the Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, he is on track to become immortalised as one of the most prominent conductors of our generation. But what is it that has propelled his success? The answer may be rooted in the conducting style referred to above.

As far as conducting styles are concerned, there is a broad spectrum that consolidates a lot of factors into what might be considered ‘good conducting’. There is more to the role of a conductor than simply maintaining a beat pattern, and while that may be the basic backbone of such an occupation, a good conductor should be engaging with his orchestra and feeling the proverbial ‘flow’ of the music. Where Dudamel is concerned, you can almost expect his conducting to be as much a performance as the orchestra on stage. With his head movements mimicking his baton, his sharp hand movements and intricate wrist control, coupled by his sheer expression (perhaps over emphasised by his beethoven-reminiscent hair moving with him), Dudamel Takes conducting to a level beyond the conductor’s call of duty, completely enveloping himself in his work. This can particularly be seen in his intense and powerful version of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (with the Gothenburg Orchestra), a version in into which Dudamel put so much energy and engagement that people began to joke that he was ‘possessed’ by Beethoven. Here you can see how much Dudamel is invested in the performance, on an emotional level as well as a level of engagement, especially during the 1st coda which Dudamel lengthens to increase tension.

Dudamel’s conducting style perhaps stems from his youth. At the age of just 18, Dudamel had been appointed the musical director of the Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, the Venezuelan national youth orchestra, touring across bordering countries and further developing his distinct style. His feats would go on to win him the 2004 Mahler Conducting Prize. In an interview covering the El Sistema education program in Gothenburg, Dudamel spoke on his early influences; “I started going to orchestral concerts and I was fascinated by the role the conductor played. I used to think he was playing an instrument that made no sound. Later I began to see that the orchestra itself was his instrument and that he was making music through his gestures.” His experiences in attending these concerts inspired Dudamel to take up the violin, which he then played as part of an orchestra under José Abreu;

“What really interested me was watching the conductor [Abreu], seeing how he captured and handled the orchestra’s energy and

tension. I’d be sitting there with my violin, thinking how incredible 

this was, wondering what he was feeling and what I’d do if I were him. One day I was rehearsing with the ‘Amadeus” chamber orchestra, but he conductor hadn’t turned up. We sat there waiting. We were just chatting away. Then I said: “Let’s see if I can’t give this a try.” It was like a game. I started mimicking. “Look! Who’s this? And This?” The others answered: “That’s this conductor, That’s like that one.” (Dudamel, 2013)

Dudamel’s work with the Bolivar orchestra can be seen as a marked difference to the work he carries out with other orchestras. To compare, in particular with the Gothenburg rendition of Beethoven’s 5th, we can look at the Bolivar’s performance of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Mambo'. While retaining a firm grip and sense of control over the orchestra, he encourages the audience to get involved and can always be seen with a grin across his face, as if he is more comfortable. On the Bolivar Orchestra, Dudamel has said “When I come back to Venezuela it’s as if I recharge my batteries. Because this orchestra is like a sun. It has such enormous energy, it refuels you. Then when you make music with other orchestras, which have their own energy, you share your energy with them and it doesn’t just come from you but from a group of young people you’ve grown up with.” (Dudamel, 2013)

So, where does Dudamel see his career going in the future? Although he has made his name through conducting, Dudamel also recently made his debut as a composer, scoring the soundtrack to the 2013 film, The Liberator. Might he switch professions, and relinquish his role as conductor of the Bolivar to another? Doubtful, but regardless of what Dudamel is doing, it can be almost guaranteed it will revolve around music. “Music is a special art form. You can’t see music. You can only hear it and feel it. Music is energy. The experience it gives us makes us more sensitive. And that’s what the world needs now: much more sensitivity. I now have the opportunity to work with the world's greatest orchestras. I learn from every orchestra and I try to give them what I’ve learned in Venezuela, from the foundations built by Maestri Abreu.” (Dudamel, 2013)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dudamel, G. (2010). Beethoven - Symphony No. 5. [Online] Gothenburg: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8oEUVh9HWw [Accessed 23 Mar. 2015].

Dudamel, G. (2012). Leonard Bernstein - Mambo. [Online] Venezuela: Deutsche Grammaphon. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYvEvP2cmdk [Accessed 23 Mar. 2015].

Dudamel, G. (2013). Interview with Gustavo Dudamel about El Sistema.

Steward, S. (2006). "He's Astonishingly Gifted". The Telegraph. [online] Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/3650415/Hes-astonishingly-gifted.html [Accessed 23 Mar. 2015].

RTÉ’s NSO ‘Musical Peaks’ Review 24th March, 2015 February 20th marked the third installment of RTÉ NSO’s Musical Peaks Friday concert series. The beginning of the concert was marked by quite a major change to the programme; stepping in as a last minute replacement for scheduled, now sick, conductor Alan Buribayev, Jonas Alber had the unprepared task of conducting quite a difficult programme featuring some of Ireland’s most talented musicians. With a day's notice, to say he pulled off would be an understatement; the set was regarded by critics as one of the most pleasing of the February concert season. The concert opened to Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture, which featured the orchestra carrying us through one of the four overtures to Beethoven’s only attempt at an opera. Alber was notably rigid throughout, wrist movements almost robotic, highlighting his capability and proficiency as an adequate replacement for Buribayev. Featuring a recharged orchestra, albeit a slightly reticent lower-brass section, this proved to be a great opener. The fantastic Violin Concerto in D, also by Beethoven, featured RTÉ’s NSO leader, Helena Wood, as soloist. Standing out from the orchestra dressed in bright blue, Wood performed whilst unusually reading from the score, rather from memory, although her demeanour never alludes to this; her performance borderlines flawless, in comparison to the sometimes sluggish sound of the orchestra. Her tuning, bow changes and tone carried by a sublime technique, all of which are highlighted during fleeting solos and sub-clamorous cadenzas. The orchestra tended to drag along at times during the opening movement, but this can be forgiven given the movement itself is quite lengthy. All in all, the performance was thoroughly enjoyable. The orchestra earned their interval break which followed afterwards. The second half of the concert featured a spine tingling rendition of Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony. As popular as the piece itself is, The sheer setup of the orchestra was enough to get the audience excited; across from the balcony, a set of cowbells were strung across a metal pole, while on stage an assembly of musicians began to appear akin to the size of a battalion. This fantastic piece, which is essentially a fusion between symphony and symphonic poem (one movement with twenty two continuous sections), is a marvelous example of orchestration. The booming introduction was reminiscent of an epic movie score, featuring a much more powerful lower brass section than what was heard only an hour earlier. It was here where Alber hit his stride; his control of the orchestra could be compared to that of Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel as he leapt and bounced in what may be perceived as a dance performance. The orchestra’s performance is well decorated with colour, power and beauty, especially relating to the solo performances of the brass and strings. The piece was certainly aided by its modernity; the inclusions of wind machines and cow bells added more depth to the performance, and the orchestra performed almost faultlessly. Alber has a great impact on the orchestra, look out for his return.

Bono Mock Obituary

8th April, 2015

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Bono killed in freak car crash aged 54

Paul 'Bono' Hewson has died following a freak car accident involving a herd of deer in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

Born and raised in early 1960’s Dublin to parents Brendan and Iris, Paul Hewson was subjected to an unusual childhood. His parents were religiously mixed; his father a Catholic but his mother a member of the Church of Ireland. He attended Glasnevin National School close to his home in Cedarwood Road, Glasnevin, then later attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Clontarf. While attending Mount Temple, he became part of a surrealist gang of people labelled “Lypton Village”. It was here where Hewson earned his nickname ‘Bono’, a shortened version of Bono Vox (itself an adaptation of bonavox, the latin for ‘good voice’). At the age of 14, he lost his mother to a cerebral aneurysm, something he later credited as the inspiration for many of his songs written for U2.

Hewson left school before graduation and, following threats that he would have to leave his house if he could not pay his own way, he sought work. Responding to an advertisement posted by Larry Mullen Jr (U2’s current drummer) calling for the creation of a band, an early version of U2, then called “Feedback” (and later “The Hype”), was conceived. Following the departure of guitarist Dik Evans, the band’s name changed to U2, kicking off their professional career.

U2 couldn’t perform covers well, giving rise for a need to write original material. Bono composed most of the lyrics for U2’s songs and, giving rise to influences from his beliefs, creating songs that were rich socio-political themes. His work has produced 13 albums with U2 and has earned him numerous awards, including 22 grammy awards, a golden globe for best original song and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.

In 1982, Bono married anti-nuclear activist Alison Stewart with whom he has had 4 children.. His marriage to Stewart enkindled a charitable spirit within himself, giving rise to him becoming very active in countries like Ethiopia and collaborations with charities such as World Vision, Project RED and the ONE Campaign.

Throughout his career, Hewson was subject to a certain amount of ridicule over his constant wearing of sunglasses throughout the year. Unknown to many, Hewson suffered from glaucoma, giving rise to him being almost never seen without his sunglasses in public (glaucoma causing the eyes to become extremely sensitive to light). On many occasions he had also suffered injuries while on tour with U2, with more recent injuries requiring surgeries (2010 saw him undergo emergency neurosurgery following a spinal injury while only last year he suffered fractures to his shoulder blade, humerus, orbit and finger following a cycling accident in New York's Central Park.

It’s impossible to ignore the contribution that Hewson has made while alive. Paul David Hewson will forever be remembered for both his music and his charity work, and is survived by his wife Alison and his four children.

Stravinsky’s ‘The Firebird’ retro review

21st April, 2015

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Igor Stravinsky - The Firebird

Giant Firebird: Legend Of Sislona Island - Steven Thompson

The above image by Steven Thompson is, in essence, an embodiment of the titular figure of the ballet ‘The Firebird’ by composer, Igor Stravinsky. The image presents us with a powerful figure; colourful and elaborate, yet graceful and full of beauty, traits which are mirrored by the dancers featured in the performance.

Stravinsky is so often held in high regard, and is arguably one of the most important and influential composers of the last century, given the diversity that is associated with his repertoire. His ballet, ‘The Firebird’, was his first foray into the world of ballet composition. Commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev, it was first performed in Paris, 1910, during the french opera season.

The Firebird tells the story of a young Prince Ivan, as he searches for the fabled titular Firebird, a glowing bird residing in the land of Kashchei, the Immortal. The young prince hopes to discover the fabled bird so that he might escape the world he has become trapped in. Running parallel to the main plotline, there is a constant sense of foreboding running through the music, highlighting the obscurity surrounding the true nature of the Firebird; will it prove to be a curse or a blessing upon its discovery?

Containing many elaborate movements, the work provides an almost programme music-esque feel, no doubt in part due to the genre (being a ballet). The terraced composition leaps between the normal and paranormal over the course of the first few movements, highlighting these shifts through clever use of instrumentation (such as the harp highlighting the mystical, dreamlike world). The Variations of the Firebird bring a distinct shift between diatonic and chromaticism, distinguishing the difference between a more grounded, comfortable atmosphere (influenced by Russian folk music) and the “diabolus in musica” (brought about by the stark harmonies produced by the use of tritones) reflecting the point in the story wherein the Firebird curses the evil Kastchei’s creatures into performing an elaborate dance. Many of the ballet’s more mystical elements are represented by descending motifs, generally performed by the string section, creating a similar terraced contrast that had previously been in the works of Stravinsky’s composer, Rimsky-Korsakov, who died two years prior to The Firebird’s completion.

Stravinsky’s Firebird is a exemplary of its style; the presence of a large orchestra matches the trend at the time, featuring masses of extra instrumentation included in the string, wind and brass sections (with notable additions including the piano and harp). Its premier performance was met with critical acclaim, marking a milestone in Stravinsky’s career as well as providing a launch pad for the then-28 year old. The success of “The Firebird” highlighted Stravinsky’s potential, particularly to Sergei Diaghilev and, as a result, lead to the solidification of their professional relationship, which resulted in the composition of equally applauded ballets, such as ‘Petrushka’ and ‘The Rite of Spring’.

Guillaume de Machaut and his contribution to 14th century music 17th April, 2015

In comparison to the centuries that had recently preceded it, the fourteenth century saw a shift in direction with regards to many aspects of everyday life, and, generally, not for the better. Plague, war and famine had all struck Western Europe, causing a massive decline in both the general population and the economy. On top of this, the church had begun to suffer following cases of both scandal and conflict and, on the reverse; revolts had broken out and were aimed at challenging secular authorities. Despite all this, however, general progression of areas weren’t impeded; new ground was being broken in terms of research and development, areas including science and technology were being advanced at a faster pace than before, followed closely by developments in the arts. With regards to music, polyphony was continuing to develop, and largely revolved around the concepts of structure and pleasure (leading to the composition of a larger amount of secular songs), yet the development of sacred music continued (the structure for these compositions changing, highlighting the evolution of the compositional process) (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2014). Throughout the fourteenth century, the division between the sacred and the secular are probably best well represented through music as a medium. It is here we discover Guillaume de Machaut; one of the fourteenth century’s best known composers and a massively important composer with regards to both secular and sacred song. As a composer, de Machaut is the most important figure to compose through a new emerging style known as Ars Nova which, given the importance of this new style, has arguably labelled him the most important composer to emerge out of fourteenth century France. Through this style, de Machaut composed over 140 works, ranging from motets, to masses, to monophonic and polyphonic songs. Here, de Machaut’s life and methods of composition will be examined as we attempt to assess his contribution to 14th century music and attempt to justify his seemingly egotistical and self indulgent style of preservation once his works were completed.

De Machaut’s contribution to fourteenth century music largely lies in the style he adopted while composing. As stated above, de Machaut composed through a new style called Ars Nova, many considering him to have typified the genre. Ars Nova (translating from latin as “inventor of the new art”) was a style created by French composer Philippe de Vitry which, among other features, primarily allowed for divisions of the semibreve into minims and allowed for the inclusion of a precursor to the time signature called a mensuration sign. Many of the works composed through Ars Nova also adopted a new technique called isorhythm, wherein the tenor adopts a role as more of a foundation for the polyphonic structure of the work rather than acting as its main melody.

Much of what scholars know about de Machaut has been extrapolated from his poetry, which narrates his life and career; so in order to properly examine de Machaut’s work, it would be appropriate to first examine his own timeline. It is generally believed that he was born in around 1300, and given the nature of the information that scholars have obtained, almost nothing is known about his childhood and youth. The first half of his life very much revolved around the sacred, being trained as a cleric in Reims before eventually taking holy orders in his early twenties. He spent much of his time in the service of John of Luxembourg, travelling with him across Europe and developing his musical knowledge until John’s death at the battle of Crécy in 1346. After this, de Machaut returned to Reims and lived out the last 31 years of his life as canon of Reims cathedral in Champagne, France. (Earp, 1995).

De Machaut would have earned a lot of his recognition while on his travels with John of Luxembourg, primarily for his poetry for which he was commissioned regularly, writing ‘dits’ for dukes and kings. While not directly contributing to music, the developments within his style of poetic composition had given rise to musical forms we use today, most notably binary form, which we can loosely see in his ‘baladelle’ style of writing (Taruskin, 2003). It is not until de Machaut arrives in Reims Cathedral that we see the emergence of a songwriter within him. During his time here, de Machaut was subscribed to minimal duties, enabling him to focus more on his development of both poetry and new compositions (Taruskin, 2003). Also, he began to translate his existing poetry to song by setting them to music, giving rise him writing for new genres and beginning to properly delve into the Ars Nova style as he composed for new and old genres. With regards to the works themselves, they majorly consist of collections of genre specific compositions, featuring 42 ballads, 23 motets, 33 virelais, 22 rondos and 19 lais, with singular compositions and around 300 poems existing also.

Accompanying these is one of de Machaut’s most well known and still practiced compositions; La Messe de Nostre Dame (English; Mass of Our Lady). It is in the early 1360’s that we see the first emergence of La Messe de Nostre Dame, a work composed with the intention of being performed at weekly mass out of the Cathedral at Reims. The mass is one of the earliest examples of the Mass Ordinary being set to a polyphonic style, and is widely considered by many to be the first polyphonic mass that was written by a sole composer. The format proved to unprecedentedly popular; written in Ars Nova, it retains the same text as the Mass Ordinary that had been performed previously. In this instance, however, the texts were consolidated into one larger flowing composition with 6 movements (as opposed to 6 separate works), accomplished through stylistic links and a shared tonal focus (split between D during the first and F during the second halves) (Leech-Wilkinson and Guillaume, 1990). The movements are written for 4-part voice, all featuring isorhythmic lines. What’s notable throughout the composition are the textual parallels that point extra-textual elements within the church, for example the Kyrie movement features a block like contrastual construction which suggests architectural parallels to the alternation of decorative glass windows and concrete pillars which run along cathedral walls. The extensive use of imperfect consonances throughout the movements also highlights the prominence and presence of the Ars Nova style (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2014). The format was so enduring that it continued to be performed at Reims Cathedral even after de Machaut’s death and lasted way into the 1600’s, with an oration for the repose of de Machaut’s soul being posthumously added into the service after his death in 1377.

The 23 motets are thought to have been composed relatively early on in de Machaut’s career, being composed in honour of a patron similarly to the way in which he composed his early days for patrons. The motet was multi-textual, featuring more than one text being sung at the same time while superficially not being connected. Of these 23, 20 were isorhythmic and are based on chants, while the other three are secular. Motets 9, 19, and 21-23 include opening segments, or introitus, where music sounds free and lyrical in contrast to the rest of the piece, standing apart from the seemingly more musical inspired sections that follow afterwards. Walters-Robertson theorised that the inclusion of these introitus may highlight the growing sense of artistry within music, seeing a departure from functional music in favour of pleasurable music (Robertson, 2002). Should this be an underlying purpose of the motets then it can be assumed that de Machaut was attempting to break past the boundaries that had been set for music prior, which is not unbelievable considering the emphasis on secular music that was present throughout fourteenth century compositions.

De Machaut’s monophonic songs followed the traditional trouvere format, revolving around the subject of courtly love. Unusually, de Machaut composed his songs using both outdated and technically difficult genres including the lai, the virelai, the chant roial and the complainte. De Machaut utilised the virelai, one of the fixed forms of the fourteenth century, the most, composing 25 monophonic virelai. The virelais follow a format wherein the text and music have particular patterns of repetition that include a refrain, phrase or section that repeats both words and music (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2014). The additions syncopation and division of semibreves through the Ars Nova style have added to the attractiveness of the virelais, improving and updating the poetic word setting with an improved musical style, which gives rise to less drawn out songs and paves the way for the evolution of the love song (again, through the trouvere style). On composition of these virelais, de Machaut has said that he wanted to them to be “danced song(s)” (Taruskin, 2003).

One of the major things to be derived from the introduction of the Ars Nova style was the development of polyphonic song, or chansons. The chansons evolved through a new style titled ‘treble-dominated style’, which gave rise to the upper voice, or cantus, carrying the text, meanwhile the tenor became a slow moving part which was devoid of any text. With this framework in place, voices could be added in between, with or without text, and could vary in tempo. In his polyphonic virelais, it can be seen that de Machaut composed in this style but reversed the order in which they were composed (see ‘Mors sui se je ne vous voy’) indicating that they may have initially been composed as monophonic virelais then translated to polyphonic virelais. Most of de Machaut’s polyphonic compositions followed ballad and rondo formats, often characterised by long melismas, which decorate the text (ie, they fall on unimportant words, perhaps further emphasising the departure away from functional text as with the motets) (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2014).

Around the age of 50, de Machaut gathered together the compositions he had worked on over the years and began to compile his works into collections, acknowledging his potential as a creator and the potential importance his work might carry into the future.

The connections he had made on his prior travels also meant that de Machaut was well supported, and had little trouble in securing resources due to the strong support of his patrons. This gave rise to little effort in having his work reproduced, in fact, the support he received was so extensive that he was able to commission and oversee the production of illuminated illustrative manuscripts bearing his life's work, with updated versions released as he aged. The choice to produce such extravagant manuscripts is a testament to just how important he saw himself to be, wanting to preserve his work so that future generations might study his compositions and, given the word setting to many of his poems, an insight into his life. In a way, this might be seen as a tad hedonistic, especially taking into consideration the heavy scrutiny under which he placed those reproducing his work (his completed works stating at the beginning of the manuscript “Here is the order that G. de Machaut wishes to have in his book”) (Hoppin, 1978).

As far as contributions to the world of music go, Guillaume de Machaut fuelled the next step in the evolution of music, both in style and notation (thanks to the emergence of the Ars Nova treatise) and provided a milestone for others to reference to through the preservation of his works and through the archetype he established as a composer of the Ars Nova style.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burkholder, J., Grout, D. and Palisca, C. (2014). A History of Western Music. 9th ed. New York-London: W.W. Norton and Company, pp.111-127.

Earp, L. (1995). Guillaume de Machaut. New York [u.a.]: Garland.

Hoppin, R. (1978). Medieval music. New York: W.W. Norton.

Leech-Wilkinson, D. and Guillaume, (1990). Machaut's Mass. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Robertson, A. (2002). Guillaume de Machaut and Reims. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Taruskin, R. (2003). The Oxford History of Western Music. London: Oxford University Press, pp.289-293.

A Response to Steven Friedson’s Remains of Ritual 9th October, 2015

Before attempting to read ‘Remains of Ritual’ I was a tad dubious. I’d heard that author, Steven Friedson, often gets lost in what he’s doing, perhaps deviating too much away from the purpose of the book and focusing on the culture surrounding him (to the point where he had ‘gone native’). While this may be true, he embraces this culture with the benefit of delivering great attention to West African dimensions of music, more specifically in terms of its relationship with religion and ritual. In foregrounding his position within the realm he describes, Friedson doesn't separate himself from the ethnographic encounter he set out to experience and, similarly, he doesn’t let his presence overly influence the encounter. Rather than incorporating a historical or sociological approach in his methods, Friedson employs a theoretical ‘phenomenological’ approach, completely opposing structuralist and semiotic stances in favour of experiencing the subject (in this case the Ewe Brekete tribe of Ghana) from a first person standpoint. He remains open about his episodes of uncomfortability and of pleasure, and writes almost in a biographical style.This approach gives rise to visceral engagement, both physical and mental, with a profoundly foreign religious idiom.

Friedson’s work, however, is not without its problems. With the notion of creating an ethnography, fieldwork may always appear to be an issue, and Friedson was no exclusion to this trope. As stated above, the notion that Freidson had ‘gone native’ stems from the forms of inclusive activity that he exhibited. As one would assume from this phenomenological stance, Freidson frequently delves too far into the tempestuous nature that is blissful absurdity; his time with the tribe gives rise to an attachment to the Brekete, one which is evident as the book progresses, and can be seen through an unusual use of metaphors near the conclusion of his first chapter, “Divine horsemen ride their mounts in an extravagant immersion into the sensorium of human experience” (Freidson, 2009, p. 40). Friedson cites ritual possession (i.e, heightened involvement with the rituals of the tribe) (when the “wives of the gods” are “mounted” by these “divine horsemen” [Freidson, 2009, p. 40]) as a reflection on the augmentation between two alternating processes of being (a theoretical thought process by Martin Heidegger that states of ‘being’ are dynamic temporal processes that constitute our personal histories [Kemerling, 2015]), “being-there” and “being-away” (Freidson, 2009, p. 17). Despite this, Friedson refuses to initiate himself into the Brekete, albeit with much difficulty, on the basis that he did not want to disrupt the culture. Immersion into the culture was unavoidable, however, as in order to have access to the cult and its priests, he needed to invoke the gods of the tribe, perform the necessary sacrifices carried out by the Brekete, consult with their divinatory oracles and put it on himself to learn to play the brekete drum.

This can be seen to be as much an advantage as it is an issue, given the experiences had and the material it provided Friedson with, but the somewhat oracular statements are hard to ignore, potentially creating supremely frustrating read for those anticipating a standard ethnography.

One of Friedson’s primary arguments revolve around the notion that the idea that ritual life and music itself are inseparable concepts. Brekete polyrhythm embodies Brekete ways of being, featuring constantly shifting, dynamic performances that transcending traditional European tropes. He describes how he sees the Brekete drum as a metaphor of the tribe; the form of the drum borrows heavily from northern African templates, but the Ewe Brekete construct them out of oil drums (Freidson, 2009, p. 26) and proceed to play them it in a style that is unique to their people. Akin to the drum, the origins of the tribe, which lie in Islam, are of lesser importance, as it has been appropriated and augmented by the tribe to now represent something entirely different. The second chapter focuses on Salah, a medium of prayer incorporated by Islam, and how the Brekete have done away with the notion of prostrating males, now in favour of seated women who sing transposed Arabic text into unique Brekete harmonies, the words of which are incomprehensible to others given the Ewe language incorporated by the tribe (Freidson, 2009, p. 47). This gives rise to a tribe who are indeed tied to music in more forms than one. To be able to play the Brekete drum was, in this regard, critical for his integration. He describes his experience as not merely a matter of learning new techniques, but rather an adoption of an entirely new methodology of listening (Freidson, 2009, p. 136). Listening to each other took priority over performance, in an attempt to appropriate new and unfamiliar methods of relating to other performers in the drum ensemble.

To conclude, it is clear to see that this book isn't merely an abstract collective discourse about the Ewe Brekete, but a story of sorts chronicling Friedson's time with an extended foreign community, and his struggle in trying to study them without becoming completely lost in their culture. In adopting their methods, he discovers that music it not a signifier of feeling or experience, but a tool used to create them, realised through the rituals carried out by the tribe, which create an environment where the person becomes ‘lost’ in the sound released. It is clear that music is the lifeblood of ritual possession, the proverbial keystone of the Ewe Brekete tribe.

Bibliography

Friedson, S. (2009). Remains of ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kemerling, G. (2015). Heidegger. [online] Philosophypages.com. Available at: http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/7b.htm [Accessed 5 Oct. 2015].

Launay, R. (2013). Friedson, Steven M. — Remains of Ritual. [online] etudesafricaines.com. Available at: http:// etudesafricaines.revues.org/14513 [Accessed 7 Oct. 2015]

Anne Bradstreet & ‘The Encounter’ as a Puritan Concept 13th October, 2015

As a puritan, a key characteristic often you might often demonstrate is the constant oration of your adherence to a puritan’s key beliefs (Danforth). Through her poetry, puritan poet Anne Bradstreet constantly strives to prove that she is upholding her key beliefs, in her own mind demonstrating her worth as a member of this puritan subculture (Downey). This is clearly seen in poems such as “As Weary Pilgrim” and “The Flesh and the Spirit”. But not all of her poetry show her off as the ideal puritan she might have wished everyone to see her as. Enter “Verses Upon the Burning of our House”, a poem which needs no descriptor. Based on one of Bradstreet’s own experiences (namely, the destruction of the Bradstreet’s home via fire), the poem highlights the humanity within Bradstreet, showcasing the dominance of human emotion over the complete submission to God, a core trait of the puritan theology (Danforth).

In this essay, I have been requested to illustrate its core point under one of encounter, community or landscape, of which I will be focusing on encounter. The Puritan frame of mind relies very much on the ‘conversion experience’, a phenomenon wherein the individual feels that God has spoken to him/her (Downey). Through this experience, a Puritan would become a member of the ‘elect’ (that is, the chosen people that God would allow into heaven). The problem that arises here is that this ‘encounter’ requires the prerequisite that you are devout to the Puritan cause, something that we will find Bradstreet is finding hard to cope after her home is destroyed. We will be looking at some of the things that lead to Bradstreet’s difficulty in maintaining her faith, which is hinted at heavily in this poem, both in its construction and content.

Looking initially at the construct of the poem, we can see without much in-depth analysis that we are presented with sets of rhyming couplets throughout. Similarly to later poets, such as Edgar Allen Poe in “The Raven” (Magher), I believe the form here can be seen as a device to build, and generally express, tension within the poem. But why would Bradstreet attempt to convey tension in such a poem, particularly in its metre, especially when the focus of the poem is already a point of high tension? Analysis of the poem suggests that the Puritan beliefs which Bradstreet had been displaying have been shaken, now taking a backseat in favour of her human emotions. Surface detail shows us that Bradstreet abandons whatever Puritan ideals she had held initially; almost immediately after she wakes up, fear is the dominant presence in her own mind (“The fearful sound of ‘fire”). While she attempts to remain true to her beliefs, her attachment to her possessions pivots her thoughts again in favour of her human side (”And not to leave me succorless’/”Counted Best”) (Bradstreet, Norton and Hopkins).

On this basis, we can assume the poet's deviation from puritan tropes in favour of a more human-esque approach to the circumstances are an instigation for tension, causing this couplet structure, as well as suggesting that Bradstreet is comfortable sharing her faulted puritan traits via her poetry (bearing in mind this poem was never made public whilst she was alive [Bradstreet, Norton and Hopkins]).

Despite this apparent self awareness, however, Bradstreet supposedly remains true to her faith, as seen in the final line of the poem (“my hope and treasure lie above”) (Bradstreet, Norton and Hopkins). However, in order to become a member of the ‘Elect’, or even to avoid being ostracised by the community she inhabited, it was important that she stayed true to her religious rite. Speculation such as this would instigate the notion that Bradstreet was not truly at peace within herself, perhaps she was even lying to herself. The later stanzas suggest she was not able to reconcile with her loss, despite attempting to reorient her thoughts over and over with a puritan focus. There is a heightened sense of reluctance in her verses, that to accept that her possessions have been taken by God is not something that is acceptable as it would have been if she had merely been imagining the concept. It is especially in the later stanzas of the poem, wherein she details the memories she is filled with each time she walks past the site of her home, All of her "pleasant things", such as her chest, her trunk and everything she “counted best” have vanished from her life (Bradstreet, Norton and Hopkins). There is a clear sense that the worldly objects have been things of profound importance of her, and that sentiment is dominating her faith; she is struggling, and potentially worrying if her chance of experiencing any ‘encounter’ has been foiled by her human traits.

As stated above, Bradstreet does ultimately dismiss her human side in favour of a more optimistic, puritan approach. She herself that "All's Vanity,"; it is possible that she has taken the fire as her “conversion experience”, that the whole experience has been a challenge. This can be derived from her self-chastisement after her impur(itan) stream of thought. She reminds herself that God can take anything at any time and, as a reward for her inconvenience, she now has a new heavenly home built by God which, awaits her in heaven (Bradstreet, Norton and Hopkins). As such, the ‘encounter’ has been not been spoilt, and she feels that her Puritan stance has been successful.

Bibliography

Bradstreet, Anne, Charles Eliot Norton, and Frank Easton Hopkins. The Poems Of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672). [New York]: The Duodecimos, 1897. Print.

Danforth, Samuel. 'A Brief Recognition Of New-Englands Errand Into The Wilderness: An Online Electronic Text Edition'. Digitalcommons.unl.edu. N.p., 2015. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.

Downey, Dara. 'Early American Writing - Anne Bradstreet'. 2015. Lecture.

Magher, Maria. 'The Effects Of A Couplet Poem'. Education - Seattle PI. N.p., 2015. Web. 8 Oct. 2015. Digital Humanities and close reading 14th October, 2015

In Matthew Wilkens’ essay, “Canons, Close Reading, and the Evolution of Method”, we are tasked with slight difficulty in ultimately discerning it’s meaning. Given the context of this week's ‘theme’, Distant and Close reading, It is easy to completely get lost in what the text is initially trying to convey. With thanks to fellow classmate Sinead’s background research, we can determine that distant reading is defined as ‘reading’ large volumes of text at a distance, using ‘graphs, maps and trees’ as forms of abstract representation that enable the study of patterns over time”, with close reading contrasting as “an intense examination of one particular passage / piece of text”.

So, with such contrasting elements contained within each method, the question must be asked; which is more effective in practice? Each comes with their own traits and advantages, leading to the assumption that to compare both would be irrelevant, so long as it works. The topic has, however been subject to much discussion. In his article, Moretti notes that “reading ‘more’ is always a good thing, but not the solution”. While close, analysed reading of a text would allow the reader enter a deeper realm of understanding in relation to the context the author of a piece has constructed, it can often confuse and convolute the reader’s thoughts. By maintaining an off-hand approach to the text, the reader may more easily discern what the author is trying to convey.

Wilkins goes on to make a point with regards to the power of abundance. Is put forward by Wilkens that the possession of data is somewhat menial and useless without a purpose for it. Wilkens suggests that when handling this data, one should do something productive with it. If an individual is searching for info, they will need to focus on a small sets of sources.

I think that close reading and distant reading can carried out simultaneously with a sense of synergy. Focusing again of what Sinead had to say, “Distant reading allows scholars to get the ‘big picture’ but close reading allows you to study and understand the intricacies of a piece of literature”.

By relying on distant reading, it can allow for the possibility of grasping the outline of someone’s idea, and using one’s own intelligence to bridge the finer details and analysis for themselves. Close reading doesn’t encourage analytical assessment as strongly as distant reading allows. The reader can take the absorbent detail for granted and not feel encouraged to experiment with other concepts, or reach an independent conclusion on their own terms.

Is put forward by Wilkens that the possession is somewhat menial and useless without a purpose for it. Wilkens suggests that when handling this data, one should do something productive with it. He notices that “there are more international locations than one might have expected” — digital humanists love to be surprised because surprise at what has been turned up is a vindication of the computer’s ability to go beyond human reading — and from this he concludes that “American fiction in the mid-nineteenth century appears to be pretty diversely outward looking in a way that hasn’t received much attention.”

The aforementioned blog also notes that “distance reading allows us to put close reading in a larger context, while close reading gives insight and texture to research.” Wilkens made a number of comments about the literary canon – more and more texts are being published each year, but we aren’t reading any faster. So something needs to be done to better understand the “indicators of cultural issues” in our society today. Data mining, word frequency and other technological processes are key in terms of this. For example, Google Ngram, where you can see graphs showing how popular a phrase has been in books from Year X to Year Y.

Moretti writes about Goethe talking to Eckermann about ‘Weltliteratur’; that the world needs to be looked at as a whole, not in terms of English Literature or American Literature etc. Moretti comments about the ‘sheer enormity of the task of reading’ and the more ambitious the project, the more distant you have to be. I thought the point about studying Victorian Literature was interesting; there are about 200 books in the ‘canon’ for this period. Obviously thousands more were written during this time. Moretti would question are you understanding the period fully if you don’t read them all? Can you claim to be a true Victorian scholar? The truth is that even if you dedicated your life to Victorian Literature you probably couldn’t read them all. That is where distant reading comes in.

Kathryn Schulz wrote in the New York Times Sunday Book Review: “The trouble is that Moretti isn’t studying a science. Literature is an artificial universe, and the written word, unlike the natural world, can’t be counted on to obey a set of laws.” I thought this was an interesting comment. Don’t we read, because we love reading? Are we perhaps over-analyzing literature where there’s no need to? I suppose one could argue that this is a ‘danger’ of distant reading.

I think that close reading and distant reading can be done successfully side by side. Distant reading allows scholars to get the ‘big picture’ but close reading allows you to study and understand the intricacies of a piece of literature.

Digital Humanities and Gender/Race 21st October, 2015

This week’s discussion is centred around the writings of both Bethany Nowviskie and Amy Earhart, two scholars who attempt to highlight some of the more disturbing issues with Digital Humanities, specifically relation to both gender and race (or more so how they’re failing to respond to such issues).

Nowviskie’s script focuses on the issue of gender inequality, relating back specifically to the lack of women speaking at the Digging into Data Challenge (part of the data mining field) which she builds her argument on (there are only two women speakers out of a figure of 33). She puts across the notion that there is inequality being caused largely by the lack of impetus and encouragement for young women to engage with fields revolving around STEM (a potential fallacy in today’s world?). But there is definitely some credibility to her statement; as Micaela mentions in her post, Irish all-girls schools are more likely to include the likes of Home Economics as an optional module, in comparison to the inclusion of Wood-work or Metalwork in an all boys school. This results in a gender stereotype, wherein women are largely prohibited from expressing interests in these subject areas. Digital Humanities play an important role in this respect, as it gives rise to attention in the direction of this issue.

Amy Earhart, on the other hand, focuses on minority representation within the world of digital humanities.Here, Earhart describes how the growth and spread of the internet would give rise to a realm where author could publish materials, without being discriminated against (ie, allowing those of colour to break into a market with the same expectations as white people).

I really enjoyed Nowviskie’s piece, and not just because of the humour throughout it, but because I feel that she explains well the reasons for the gender imbalances that she has observed in data-mining. In discourses about gender inequalities in the workplace, and in particular about the wage gap, I find that many people don’t understand the real reasons that these imbalances exist. Many people, men and women alike, will argue time and time again that there just so happens to be a smaller amount of girls and women interested in STEM subjects and careers. These people fail to acknowledge the fact that, as a result of our everyday discourse, girls are discouraged from expressing interests in these type of subjects. Nowviskie outlines these problems eloquently in her essay.

Amy Earhart’s essay was also enjoyable to read, and focuses on the issue of minority representation within “digital texts.” She explains how, in the 1990s, practitioners of Digital Humanities were excited by the Internet, and thought it would become “a tool by which to recover texts by writers of colour.” Earhart goes on to outline the ways in which this was not the case, and gives an account of how the literary canon has not in fact been reworked, but has been largely reinforced, due to issues of funding and affiliations with particular institutions. This is infuriating to me, because as I mentioned above, I think that one of literature’s most powerful and brilliant tools is its ability to give positive representation to, and elevate the voices of, groups that have been oppressed in society. Earhart explains that digital texts must meet strict “international” standards in order to be published, but this makes me wonder: is it not the responsibility of the bodies who set these standards, to ensure that they are accessible to 'diverse' writers?

"We imagined that the free access to materials on the web would allow those previously cut off from intellectual capital to gain materials and knowledge that might be leveraged to change the social position of people of color."However this dream of cultural transparency was not realised and in reality the digital humanist cannon is devoid of those with an ethnic background. Take for example the work of The National Endowment of Humanities (NEH). In the time period between 2007 and 2010 they awarded 141 grants to projects in the digital humanities sector, of those awarded, only 29 were focused on diverse communities and a marginal 16 of those were focused on preservation or recovery of ethnic texts. This is a truly shocking statistic that proposes the question of how can we try and promote cultural equality amongst our fellow humanists.

Digital Humanities and Digital Progression 4th November, 2015

I hate to echo the other posts in this fora, but it is true that availability and accessibility are two things which are truly invaluable to our generation; The digitisation of texts, and the tools that have been developed to let us search them, have eliminated time consumption en masse as well as providing a method of actually having the text in front of you regardless of your location ("we can allow these resources to gain the significant advantages, such as accessibility, flexibility and manipulability") To touch on what Sinéad said, as it is a very prominent point, we now have access to manuscripts previously off limits to all, which essentially propels research in respective subject areas to reach levels unseen before, as the data is freely available and in high resolution thanks to today’s equipment (N.B, Washington Document as mentioned in Cohen and Rosenzweig). This ties into the notion that in ‘doing’ digital humanities, a sense of being actively involved in it’s progression (utilising examples of such documents) is just as much a constituent part of the process as any.

Following on from what Megan said, Renear details in his text the term ‘markup’, used to describe an editor that would ‘mark-up’ a manuscript through editorial. From a digital perspective, he describe it as "information formally distinct from the character sequence of digital transcription of a text” . The article looks at the upside to ‘mark ups’ from the producer perspectives (ie, transcription, authorship, etc). advantages such as simplified compositions (nb, simple english). These elements all enable the digitisation of text, offering a plethora of possibilities as mentioned above. To “do” digital humanities is a practice that has benefitted students and other walks alike. To actually have to sit and search through books for information may suit some, but is quickly becoming the way of the luddite. As an English student, the availability of digital texts through the likes of Google Books and its counterparts makes it so much more accessible to construct an essay, as well as saving on the costs of whole texts.

I think ‘doing’ digital humanities is a practice that can be available to all students of literature – if that’s what they’re interested in. It could possibly be said to be more difficult in this day and age, but you could technically get away with not using digital humanities in your studies. However – I think it’s an area that’s only going to grow and develop. Like the naysayers who at one time refused to believe computers would be helpful in the future, you’d be putting yourself at a disadvantage if you didn’t get involved with the world of digital humanities as a literature student.

In Kenneth M. Price’s piece he notes what Jerome McGann argued – that little has been done to “prepare literary and historical scholars for this work, thus leaving the task...to people less knowledgeable about the content itself: librarians and systems engineers.” This comment tied in well with the Stephen Ramsey pieces that were recommended reading. In “On Building”, Ramsey asked the question “do you have to know how to code?” in relation to being a digital humanist. His opinion is that yes, you do. Reading and making a map are two different tasks, he argues. I agree with him. I think to be ‘doing’ digital humanities you have to be actively involved in the resources that you are associated with. You can pay someone to help you with you project (hence you need no training) but I think Ramsey is convincing in saying that you should get involved in the technical side.

I personally believe that the most important and significant advancement that digital humanities in practice offers literary studies is the notion of accessibility and availability. Renear talks about text encoding and focuses specifically on the term markup. Markup here is taken from the traditional publishing word were an editor would mark-up a manuscript by adding annotations etc. From a digital perspective, the markup is characterised as "information formally distinct from the character sequence of digital transcription of a text" (Renear 219). The article continues on to examine the advantages of mark ups from the perspectives of authorship, composition, transcription, and so on. Some of these advantages include, the simplification of compositions, more natural and more natural editing tools are provided and output device support is enhanced. (Renear 222-23). But what has all this encoding got to do with accessibility?

Without text encoding and digital markups, the digitisation of documents would be impossible. In their chapter entitled Becoming Digital, Cohen and Rosenzweig discuss making the past into digital files. They believe, correctly, that in doing so "we can allow these resources to gain the significant advantages [...] such as accessibility, flexibility and manipulability" (Cohen & Rosenzweig, p80). In digitising files and documents from their physical copy, it offers a wide range of possibilities including online research and teaching that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago (Cohen & Rosenzweig, p81). Ignoring the statement that Cohen and Rosenzweig make about the cost of digitisation; "it also incurs a cost" (Cohen & Rosenzweig 93), the example that they use about how easy accessible and available, once fragile documents are is very interesting,

They use the example of Pierre Charles L' Enfant's original 1791 plan for the city of Washington.The original copy of his plan is so damaged and brittle that the Library Congress no longer permits researchers to examine it at all.However, now millions of researchers and individuals can view the digital reproduction easily with the click of a mouse on the libraries website. What was once an unavailable document because of its fragility, is now readily available for all who wish to use it. Digitising documents like this "permits quick and easy browsing of large volumes of material" (Cohen & Rosenzweig, p84).

Speaking from the perspective of an English Literature student, the accessibility of digital versions of texts makes life whole lot easier and cheaper for us debt ridden students. Of course this is only one example among many of how a fragile document has been transcribed. Yes the cost of the transformation for hard copy to analog and so on is high, but in the larger context, isn't it worth it?

A Response to Barry Shank’s Dissonant Identities; The Rock and Roll Scene in Austin Texas 13th November, 2015

Dissonant Identities; The Rock and Roll Scene in Austin Texas is Barry Shank’s academic investigation of the Austin music scene - but is told in two very different halves, both of which form an ambitious ethnography with a remarkable scope and sense of depth. The book traces the roots of the Texas music scene within Austin, from the origins of the Honky Tonks right through to the emergence of “Austin Punk” (Shank, 1996, pp.99). The book is written initially from personal perspective, then moving onto an academic, analytical standpoint, before Shank again altering his research methodology to essentially create what he calls a “postmodern ethnography” (Shank, 1996, pp.xi) , where he drops his analytical approach, instead engaging hands-on with on the scene that emerged following the establishment of the Armadillo World Headquarters, the Rock ‘n’ Roll and the aforementioned “Austin Punk” scene.

Some ethnographic considerations arise when reading Shank. With a blend of styles in creating this ethnography, one wonders if ethnographic description should be as personal as his; as he edges into the blossoming post-punk scene, the theoretical foundations he undertakes abandon any cogent form of discourse. He seeks to define a scene through methods comparable to Steven Freidson’s phenomenological approach. His definition, as a result, is an ”over productive signifying community”, in which live performance produce “semiotic disruption” (Shank, 1996, pp. 122). This insider approach also suggests a potential removal of objectivity; he goes on later to describe the scene in a revering manner - “Within this scene, through fantastic identification with the forbidden, new enunciative possibilities are formed for only a moment” (Shank, 1996, pp.136). If one becomes so involved with the scene, what is there to stop an individual from succumbing to the scene’s nature? Halfway through the book, the tone changes so much that an uninformed reader might think Shank has become blithely unconcerned with the diachronic work he dedicated himself to prior (evidenced by his arbitrary detailing of a sandwich he ate, the ingredients he thought were footnote worthy [Shank, 1996, pp. 254]). However, this can be compared to the ‘gone native’ state that Friedson had entered in his own ethnography, Remains of Ritual, which saw him act as an active insider within the Ewe Brekete tribe. In this instance, it may be appropriate to award Shank the same label. Shank ultimately ties the two sections together to discuss

One of Shank’s primary themes established throughout the book is music and identity formation. Where Honky Tonks had been established as liminal areas, built around anti establishment virtues, the influence of their encoded successors (ie, hippy music and Honky Tonk as a genre), such as Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest Tubb and Doug Sahm, had ironically begun to influence more upscaled regions of the US, a process Shank refers to as “commercial reconstruction of traditional community” (Shank, 1996, pp.59). Shank attributes much of this to John Lomax, a folklorist who compiled traditional cowboy songs on record for commercial release at the beginning of the 20th century(Shank, 1996, pp. 20). Lomax commercialised something that had been royalty free to hear and enjoy prior and, in doing so, created a upset within the locale that would cause a ripple effect, carrying through the decades akin to the encoded history within Austin’s music scene - “DIY”. Alongside this, popular music had been established as a crucial platform with regards to cultural identity. The image of the “authentic” cowboy was not merely an aesthetic creation, but also social, one that would influence cultural practice. This allowed for a transition of this encoded culture from local, intimate performance to the creation of a national consumption culture, "in order to 'make it,' to make a living through music [..] the musician must accede to the structural organization of the recording industry. The projected identity must become a commodity traded for gain, not a gift exchanged in social communion"(Shank, 1996, pp.188).

To conclude, Shank tells us that he wanted to examine the rock and roll scene and how it “muddles the borders” of what had been considered scene in prior ethnographic ventures. He details in the preface that he wanted to do this by integrating himself with the scene he is already very much engaged with, but by attempting to act as a voyeur rather than an active participant through a balance of "dialectic of distance and intimacy" (Shank, 1994, pp. xii). I believe he has succeeded; it is clear to see that this book isn't merely an abstract collective discourse chronicling the progression of the music scene in Austin, but a story of sorts, chronicling the empirical and theoretical aspects of certain elements during this development. Shank has produced a work that is an academic investigation, combining ethnography, musicology, semiotics, music criticism, and history.

Bibliography

Monahan, C. (1996). Review of Dissonant Identities: The Rock 'n' Roll Scene in Austin, Texas. Notes, [online] 52(3), pp.831-832. Available at: http://www.jstor.org.ucd.idm.oclc.org/stable/pdf/898656.pdf?acceptTC=true [Accessed 10 Nov. 2015].

Shank, B. (1994). Dissonant identities. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.

Toynbee, J. (1995). Review. Popular Music, [online] 14(3), pp.337-379. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853135 [Accessed 10 Nov. 2015].

A Report on Dr Liam Cagney’s Aisteach & Its Precursors 16th November, 2015

Last Monday the class was treated to a seminar from Dr Liam Cagney of City College London. The seminar was lecture based, and focused largely on Cagney’s current post doctoral work. This work was based around Aisteach, a collection of works compiled and edited by modern composer Jennifer Walshe, and its precursors. The lecture began with Cagney playing some examples of music that found on tapes and dating back to the 1960’s. These tapes contained music composed á la the likes of Gerald Barry and Raymond Deane - random, non-cogent mixtures of sound that would hint at modern irish composers. The thing here is that these dated back far past the emerging avant garde composer era within Ireland, hinting that these were tapes containing the origins of minimal music in the country.

He went on to tell us that the tapes contained the works of Caoimhin Breathnach, and how he experimented with the taped he recorded om, detailing how he would burn, submerge and bury these tapes among other methods to see if they would have any effect on the sound the tape would later produced (obviously not many survived). These tapes would often contain items that would stretch outside of organised sound, as he would often record excerpts of kung fu movies, pagan rituals, divination ceremonies etc. One particular tape that survived, ‘Subliminal Tape 86 - Sound Barrage’, contained unsettling instructions voiced by an unnerving narrator on how to prepare oneself for meditation, which was laced in with random, creepy sounds.

That covered the ‘precursor’ section to the seminar, after which he moved on to Aisteach’s editor, Jennifer Walshe. Walshe was presented as quite a strange character - it was inevitably revealed that Aisteach was in fact a parody-esque book, chronicling the apparent ‘alternate history of avant garde in Ireland’. The book would suggest that fiction and music cross over, something Walshe tried to convey in a 2013 paper mentioned by Cagney. Cagney went on to detail Walshe’s strange career; born in 1974, she is arguably Ireland’s best known composer. With a Doctorate from Northwestern University, she composes opera, text scores notated scores and is a vocalist improvisation skills. The music she composes is conceptual, and is performed under different personas she created, all contained under the fictional ‘Grupat Collective’. The nine members of this collective were compared to the many persona of David Bowie, leading Cagney to believe she is pioneering the Genre. Two interesting things said by Cagney were “Walshe creates her own precursors” and “new art does not enter into a ready made tradition”. Does this suggest that the precursors suggested at the start of the lecture were irrelevant?

He went on to compare Aisteach with the like of Roberto Bolano’s “Nazi Literature in the Americas”, something that pioneered “Parody and Satire in the world of publishing”, as well as Jorge Luis Borges, ‘A survey of the words of Herbert Quain’. An emphasis was put on Walshe “owning it”, it being the category, before ending on a quote from Walshe, “the only people who copy sound are those who don’t have a feel for their own”.

The seminar was thoroughly enjoyable, and I look forward to seeing the completed research of Dr Cagney in the future.

A Report on Prof. Tassilo Erdhardt’s The Future of Early Music - an Age of Experimentation?

30th November, 2015

Last Monday saw Professor Tassilo Erhardt of Liverpool Hope University carry out our final seminar for this semester, entitled “The Future of Early Music - an Age of Experimentation?” The seminar saw him question if ‘early music’ was a 20th century phenomenon. He argues the notion of authenticity, that the way we perceive early music is a figment of our imagination, in comparison to how it originally sounded.

I entered to hear Erhardt speak about post-war music and the music of the 60s and 70s, where people became aware of period instrument construction leading to replicas of instruments superior to prior “awful” attempts. He mentioned the baroque violin, which gained popularity in the 70s when recordings of early music spread via CD production. Erhardt said that early music might be an extension of musicology, as a practical application of the field, saying that the “hippy movement” was the death of early music - big names retired and big ensembles diminished, but through passing of information and skill onto students the genre lived on through academic mediums.

He then detailed the spread of the early music genre, tying into the last point - classical musicians played this music as a group of “renegade outcasts”, but the genre found its way into the mainstream. This happened through the establishment popularity growth of an early music symposium, established to combat a growing sense of elitism amongst these ‘renegades’ (who, according to Erhardt, were a bunch of “old farts” interested in classical music). The symposium began as a small organisation, but grew into a commercial festival, something which Erhardt had little appreciation for.

Erhardt believes the genre has become “stale”, that it’s no better than the post-war music scene that the early music scene was rebelling against. Schools that can “bash through a piece” of early music in the space of a few hours exist, but the early elitism still exists with regard to authenticity (which is a bragging right among these musicians). Erhardt questioned us on musical authenticity, quoting Richard Taruskin saying authenticity is “nonsense” and “they’re making it up”. He said that there is a certain breaking point with authenticity; “once you’ve found it there’s nowhere to go”. He argued that “most musicians and listeners don’t care about authenticity, but they do about originality”, and said that early music pioneers in the 1960s doubled music and “experimented with anything new and crazy” (following Jazz tropes, leading many classical musicians to migrate styles). He described the quest for authenticity as successful because it was “new”, and that it’s ironic that it’s now “the nail in the coffin because it can't go anywhere else”.

To stop the movement becoming stale, he states we must abandon core principals of the movement, take the music and create entirely new experiences and methods of playing - we shouldn’t claim to play authentically, but rather “create an experience”. Following this, he played excerpts from Red Priest, a group who take classical music adding a modern rock spin to it. He also referenced the Irish baroque orchestra who performed Handel’s ‘Messiah’ without a conductor, featuring a lead female violinist director (uncommon to the period).

He then spoke about the opposite, “going hard to be more authentic”, that “if composers from other periods had dug up centuries old instruments during their composing eras they would have seemed alien”. He says on the surface of old music “there is so much to do”, that period singers today do nothing to emphasise 17/18th century treatises, that ensemble lineups would be “squashed together like penguins trying to see the lectern” in a church, that you’d be reliant on the organ’s harmony to find your note, among other examples. He talked in detail about the clandestine masses performed for wealthy catholics in the UK, that pieces performed at there are now performed in the centre of Westminster, something the composer never had in mind.

Concluding, he stated “only Bach can perform Bach” is a fallacy, suggesting are we all musically stupid. “Is it all that important that composers and contemporaries know best how to perform the music? Even the most romantic version of a baroque piece will get away with differences, as long as it sounds well” .

He challenged us to open our minds to appreciate renditions of classical pieces in different period styles, ending with the thought provoking question “is this something that will keep older music alive?”

Depictions of Femininity and Women’s Experience in Early American Writing 2nd December, 2015

Femininity; a noun, used to describe the qualities of being female ('Femininity'). While this definition remains static, the course of history has changed the the factors that the definition references. With the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the American Constitution in 1787 and the Bill of Rights following after 1791 (Wiegand), an era in American history, and literature, seems to have come to an end. The historical and moral focus of puritan literature, along with the intellectual and political purpose of enlightenment literature, shifts - literature arrives at a familiar place in terms of poetry, stories, drama and novels. Specifically, it arrives with women's novels.Of course, women in this early period typically retained their decorative role and their old functions in a male dominated world. This was the beginning of women asserting their rights in the arts and in literature and, slowly, through the nineteenth century this emphasis on women's rights in the literary world will began to increase. These works, of course, opened up questions about women's roles and their limited choices - certainly the world remained very much a male dominated world. These novels kickstarted the attention bubble surrounding women that build up over the next century, culminating in full equality for women in literature by the end of the 19th century.

I would like to sideline the historical tidbits to briefly outline the intention of this essay. Early American Writing, as an field of study, examines some of the writing that reflects “American” experiences. The emergence of the women’s novel gave rise to narratives that were critical and impactful, in part due to the authenticity of the source. The challenge faced here is to examine how American writing depicts femininity and women’s experience, something that is more credible when examined from the point of view of the corresponding sex. Enter ‘The Coquette’ - Hannah Webster Foster’s huge bestseller, comparable in popularity with the likes of Susanna Rowson's ‘Charlotte: A Tale of Truth’. The novel garnered a lot of attention towards female writers for the first time really since Anne Bradstreet’s poetry in the 17th century.

The word coquette derives from “coquettish behavior”, in which a woman acts in a playful way that is intended to make men find her attractive. It is a very formal word, a combination of playfulness and flirtatiousness. A coquette then, of course, is a woman who behaves in a coquettish manner (Wood). Eliza Wharton is the heroine of this story, and she is torn between two men; J. Boyer - a serious cleric who pursues her avidly, representing for Eliza social respectability. The other contender, Major Peter Sandford - a charmer and aristocratic character with a reputation of a “rake” (Foster et al.). He represents love to attraction, sexual attraction at that. How Eliza works out the conflict between these two males becomes the plot of this novel.

Foster interestingly bases her story on a sequence of true incidents - The Coquette was published in 1797, but turn the clock back nine years before that to July 25th, 1788 - the Bell Tavern in Danvers, Massachusetts (now Peabody, Massachusetts) was host to a woman, who gave birth to a stillborn child while resident before dying hours later. Her name - Elizabeth Whitman, and we can immediately see the connection here with The Coquette - the exact event is mirrored towards the heroine Eliza Wharton. 4 days later after her death, the story appeared in the Salem Mercury newspaper, but it soon attracted local and even national attention, and it was reprinted in dozens of New England newspapers. What were the circumstances of this death? Why was a well aboard woman in a tavern giving birth to a child, with no father around no parents around? This basis forms the foundation for points to be elaborated on - the virtue of women, the heightened presence of patriarchy, Eliza’s attempt to escape social convention and her mental struggle in doing so. I also attempt to investigate the novel, as it reads almost like a commentary on social status on the period.

Immediately, we are faced with an air of difference about the novel. lt is told in an a epistolary style, which means the novel is told through a sequence of letters. This form provides a very immediate look at the story - a letter, of course, is written in the first person and lots of novels are written in the first person, but a conventional novel, has a continuous first-person point of view throughout. In a novel written in this epistolary style, you have a shifting first-person point of view. Elizabeth Hewitt speaks on the inclusion of this epistolarity, calling it something “increasingly rare”, something that was commonly associated with turn of the century politics, but here she comments on it’s use as a feature of femininity, that it is “protection of the female virtue” (Hewitt). The main value women held during the period was their virtue; it was something to be celebrated and protected, only to be relinquished within the confines of marriage. Foster paints virtue as being one of the key traits of femininity in this novel;

“No female, whose mind is uncorrupted, can be indifferent to reputation. It is an inestimable jewel, the loss of which can never be repaired. While retained, it affords conscious peace to our own minds, and ensures the esteem and respect of all around us.” (Foster et al.)

The letters act as a method of public scrutiny, as they are her private sentiments published to her mother and friends. It is only when she stops addressing the letters to her these individuals that Sanford is able to gain access to her. Foster’s structure would imply that communication between women is gossip-like, and that straying from the convention would only lead to tragedy, which here results in a loss of virtue.

This adherence to outside conventions, as detailed above, would suggest that there is a rich sense of patriarchy throughout the novel, and this both true and intentional. Foster creates a world that reinforces the outside reality - that patriarchy is so rife that even women are indoctrinated into promoting the virtues they are forced to adhere to. This can be seen in Lucy’s letters on the subject of the circus;

“To see a woman depart so far from the female character, as to assume the masculine habit and attitudes; and appear entirely indifferent, even to the externals of modesty, is truly disgusting.” (Foster et al.)

Such versing is mentally uncomfortable and disconcerting to us as readers. Lucy’s outlook on women straying from traditional gender conventions are just as bold as those mentioned by the opposite gender. This, as stated above, suggests indoctrination - is the ‘women’s experience’ truly a woman’s if they are expressing male ideals?

These ideals begin to attack Eliza’s mental state of mind. Throughout the novel’s introduction and development, she is unable to mentally decide between her reasoning and emotions. When it comes to making a decision on what suitor to marry, she comes to the conclusion that she does not particularly want to marry either of them; if she does, she would only be using he married status to enable her to elevate her social status, which in turn would enable her to find someone she could connect with personally, rather than have her marriage prearranged.

“In regard to these men, my fancy and my judgment are in scales. Sometimes one preponderates, sometimes the other. Which will finally outweigh, time alone can reveal.” (Foster et al.)

She is aware Boyer is the safer and wiser choice of the two, he is a serious cleric who pursues her avidly, representing for Eliza potential social respectability. The other contender, Major Peter Sandford - a charmer and aristocratic character with a reputation of a rake. He represents love to attraction, sexual attraction at that. Eliza and the Sanford share more commonalities, however; their prospective relationship is attractive to her, but unbeknownst to her, he is dangerous. His letters to Charles reveal that while he is also attracted to Eliza, but he is intentionally leading her on his intentions. He is a scheming man, and the true villain of the novel - a seducer who brings about Eliza’s downfall. Sanford has lost his fortune he's fallen into financial difficulties, but no one in the community knows it. He has a reputation of a rake and a seducer, and Eliza’s friends warn her away from him. Eliza's desire to wed later and with someone she desires highlights her want to escape the conventions of the time, as well as the intense patriarchal control which dictates who she would marry.

Despite this desire for some form of liberation, Eliza clearly seeks out a partner with less than honorable intentions. We learn early on that she has just escaped from an undesirable fate - for some time she had been engaged to a very stodgy clergymen - this was again according to her family's wishes, but as a novel opens this man has died. Eliza is recovering at the beginning of the story from period of mourning, but she's feeling liberated and happy really recognising that she never really felt much love for this man who, after all, was the choice of parents, not hers. She did respect him, and she's not particularly broken up about the fact that he's now dead. The partner whom she now seeks out is sought with a coquettish eye - but the text actually raises the question as to whether Eliza is a coquette or not. She is certainly referred to as one by the people who surround her - her friends and the people she attracts - but she continuously brushes off the label;

“ I believe I shall never again resume those airs, which you term coquettish, but which I think deserve a softer appellation; as they proceed from an innocent heart, and are the effusions of a youthful, and cheerful mind.” (Foster et al.)

She understands her vivacious nature, but she does not hold any thought out schemes or manipulative thoughts. While she the point may be argued in relation to Sanford, she is merely showcasing traits as a socialite.To label her as coquettish might only be correct in the sense she attempted to make her own decisions, only to be once again oppressed by the patriarchal overhang. (NB, She arguably acts coquettishly around Boyer, but only when contemplating her marriage to him rather than seek out true liberation).

An interesting point to consider is the fate of Eliza, and her real-life counterpart, Elizabeth. When it comes to the story the novel was based on, there are many facts missing that The Coquette fills in for itself. Nobody ever knew who the father of the stillborn child was. What was a nice woman such as Elizabeth doing at a place like the tavern she was found in? Even today, people still speculate about whom the father really was (Wood). Elizabeth Whitman was well-spoken; she had signs of a good education and came from a good family - her father was a respected minister in the region, her mother was from a prominent new england family. She was related to the family of Jonathan Edwards, a prominent preacher, and she had corresponded with prominent people of the time. She was known in the Highest New England society, yet here she was in a tavern, seduced, pregnant, abandoned, alone in her death. Eventually, an anonymous contributor writing for the Boston Chronicle in 1788 wrote in an essay style article on Elizabeth Whitman's life and death, in which she was labelled “a good moral lecture to young ladies” (Davidson). Foster would have had access to this paper, and potentially capitalised on the notion. This provokes the question; is The Coquette more a social commentary on the period? The depiction of women throughout the novel, excluding Eliza, are conforming to the patriarchal and conventional clockwork mesh that typified the period, but as soon as someone attempts to break free from the loop, she falls ill across multiple mediums, eventually resulting in her death, her child’s death and the sullying of her name after post self-expulsion from familiar society. As Stern says in her article “Live Burial and the Tyrannies of Voice in The Coquette”,

“Eliza’s death thus takes on a redemptive, if not transformative, power for the feminised chorus. Renews and reconstituted by the tragedy, the community must continue to disavow the transgressive freedom afforded to them by Eliza Wharton’s life and letters.”

(Stern)

Following this ideal, it’s almost as if the death of Eliza is something that must happen, almost as if she if a sacrifice for all other females. The impact of this in the novel holds some retribution for Eliza - once all is said and done, and Eliza had died, Sanford recognises what he has done and repents.

This repentance, however, is subject to argument. Foster challenges the reader, asking to question the inevitable assumptions revolving around Eliza's death. The author’s examination of Sanford provide some additional insight into the ‘woman-corrupted’ narrative. This allows for a sympathetic view Wharton, painting her more as a puppet in the hands of a mastermind, manifested as Sanford.

“They think to enjoy the pleasures which result from this source; while their vanity and ignorance prompt each one to imagine herself superior to delusion; and to anticipate the honor of reclaiming the libertine, and reforming the rake!” (Foster et al.)

Her decisions still paint her as somewhat accountable for the result of the novel - a lack of self-awareness and display of vanity have pushed her to where she is, but the true villain of the novel is the manipulative mind within Sanford. This may be Foster attempting to highlight the weakness within the female mind at the time, that after such an extended period of time of exposure to the largely patriarchal society, the female mind has become too susceptible to the likes of Sanford, who are calculated in their thoughts and versed in methods of attaining what they want through flattery, lies etc.

The end of the novel aptly finishes with a haunting sense of repentance as we're brought to Eliza's tombstone. It emphasises the implied notion that Eliza represents the outlier to social convention, that she was truly a representative of how all women living in strict patriarchal areas had little to no freedom, often punished by their society for attempting to deviate from convention. The beginning of the novel featured, as Stern put it, "both sexes arguing about the merits of female interest in the public sphere" (Stern), but the end of the novel should provoke otherwise. Eliza could be seen as the "everywoman", someone who is a representative of all females, but who had the bottle to break out of convention.

“LET CANDOR THROW A VEIL OVER HER FRAILTIES, FOR GREAT WAS HER CHARITY TO OTHERS. SHE SUSTAINED THE LAST PAINFUL SCENE, FAR FROM EVERY FRIEND; AND EXHIBITED AN EXAMPLE OF CALM RESIGNATION.” (Foster et al.)

The observance of Eliza's "calm resignation" is something that readers can find a certain degree of solace in - who ponder what exactly seeking to wait for a perfect marriage, picking a decent partner, and enjoy being flirtatious and finding a sexual partner are all so terrible.

To begin to wrap things up, it is important to realise that The Coquette relates to so much more than femininity and the women’s experience. The social implications for for a novel are likely subject to study by sociologist and the like. But, in reference to the purpose of the essay, It is clear that the depiction of both of these factors, specifically in relation to this text, are centered around a sense of independence and retirement from social convention. The points listed above are anchored in the escape from patriarchy and desire for independence, creating an underlying current that is not too dissimilar to early suffragette ideals. The women’s experience as it's depicted here is far from ideal, offering no freedom and almost complete indoctrination as a result of extreme patriarchy, and femininity revolves around the preservation of virtue to that it can be relinquished to someone you mightn’t even want to marry. I’ll reiterate what was stated above, in that I feel the book is a social commentary on the period. I’ll end with a quote from Carroll Smith Rosenberg that I feel wraps up here in an appropriate manner;

“Hannah Foster’s Coquette offers us a different narrative. Eliza Wharton’s downfall, Foster tells us, was not lust but the desire for independence coupled with the wish to rise socially. As such she represented those within the emergent middle class, who, rejecting traditional norms, anxiously embraced individualism, risk, and the new capitalism”

(Smith-Rosenberg)

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boston Chronicle,. 1788: n. pag. Print.

Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution And The Word. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Print.

'Femininity'. Merriam Webster 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.

Foster, Hannah Webster et al. The Coquette, And The Boarding School. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2013. Print.

Hewitt, Elizabeth. 'Foster's Epistolarity'. The Coquette And The Boarding School. Hannah Webster Foster, J Harris and B Waterman. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2013. Print.

Shea, M. et al. 'Toward A Constructionist Perspective Of Examining Femininity Experience: The Development And Psychometric Properties Of The Subjective Femininity Stress Scale'. Psychology of Women Quarterly 38.2 (2013): 275-291. Web.

Hewitt, Elizabeth. 'Foster's Epistolarity'. The Coquette And The Boarding School. Hannah Webster Foster, J Harris and B Waterman. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2013. Print.

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. 'From Domesticating ‘Virtue’: Coquettes and Revolutionaries in Young America'. The Coquette And The Boarding School. Hannah Webster Foster, J Harris and B Waterman. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2013. Print.

Wiegand, Steve. U.S. History For Dummies. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2009. Print.

Wood, Barry. 'The First American Bestsellers: Charlotte Temple And The Coquette'. 1997. Presentation.

www.thesaurus.com,. 'Synonyms And Antonyms Of Words'. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

The Possibilities & Challenges Offered By Digital Reading 4th December, 2015

Given the increase in digital reading, obvious sites for new kinds of reading techniques, educational strategies and initiatives are the interactions between digital and print literacies. Literary studies has been slow to address these possibilities.’ (Katherine Hayles, ‘How We Read’, p. 65). Discuss the specific possibilities and challenges offered by digital reading (including machine reading and hyper reading) to how we read and study literature.

The Humanities; an academic discipline that has been central to how the human race has developed and become what it is today. Without the uptake of such study, literature would never have excelled to the high peak it is perched on. This is down to the fact that humanities are, in their purest form, reading - and analysis of said reading; critique, not production (Hayles [Keynote]). How we read had never been a point of contention - print has always dominated; ever since the first print manuscripts, which have been traced back to the 11th century (Michel), print has been the core method of transferring literature. However as time progressed, so did technology, and the humanities have finally met a contender in the world of reading mediums. Here we enter the world of Digital Humanities.

In her essay How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine, Katherine Hayles argues that digital humanities are attempting to change the way we read, but before we get into the notion of disruption in within the humanities, there is a question that must be addressed; are these “digital” humanities? This is a question that has yet to be answered with a solid definition, but the consensus among academics is that it is an area of study that has emerged out of the intersecting points between the humanities and computing. The world of technology “gave birth” to internet through Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, and with it a whole new way of transferring information between peers. Fast forward to today and you have connected devices with the capacity to display virtual word documents, enable individuals to read books digitally, download virtual copies of print journals and search through via a push of a button.

Digital reading is emerging as a serious contender to print reading. Where the two interact conceptually - in terms of educational strategies, initiatives and new reading techniques - has not been addressed as hastily as it should within the realm of literary studies, leaving the potential for a renewed medium in exploring the humanities in a hazy light within the educational world. I intend to explore the possibilities that digital reading offers to the realm of reading and studying literature. However, as a relatively new discipline there are also challenges that arise, which I will also explore.

When we think of the raw potential that lies within the notion of digital reading, the first thing that comes to mind is the practical applications from an educational perspective.

In her article Educational Uses Of The Digital World For Human Development, Colette Daiute states that the three fundamentals of teaching through digital reading are “interactivity, symbolic flexibility, and the vast array of available information”. Within primary educational institutions, digital reading is playing a key role in the development and implementation of curricula through these factors. This, however, neglects the humanities as a field of inclusion, instead being incorporated across STEM subjects (Butler-Kisber). This has been a successful endeavour within the STEM bracket; through the inclusion of iPads and tablets locked into a secure network, the lecture style of information transmission to be eliminated, enabling select schools to become a hive of sorts built around discussion and reflection (Butler-Kisber). The inclusion of the arts and humanities within this stable has long been petitioned for (Catchen), and the benefits of such a possibility would certainly become evident in terms of on-hand digital dictionaries, enabling children to research words they understand, digital thesauruses, enabling them to discover new synonyms, and potentially eliminating the hefty costs physical book via an ebook reader.

However, with the state of young minds at such an early stage in mental development, one ponders if any challenges might arise arise. This brings us back to Hayles, who has been very outspoken in relation to the mental effects that result from exposure to digital reading, as opposed to traditional print reading. Learning to read changes the brain, both in a morphological sense and functional sense. Research carried out by Gary Small, of UCLA, shows that individuals who read from print were found to have activated far more regions of their brains as opposed to individuals who habitually read digitally on screens (Hayles [Keynote]). While it may be debatable with regard to what is considered ‘habitual’ reading, anything that may stint or impede the development of a young mind should be approached with caution. Also, according to Hayles, studies carried out by the Nielsen Norman Group suggested that adherence to digital reading lead to a developed sense of impatience with regards to reading, featuring the subjects desiring a higher level of continuous stimulation. and revealing that they were struggling to make large investments of time in a single activity such as reading (Hayles [Keynote]). While this group may not have been children, the prospect of such an a repeat is worrying to say the least. With the advent of programs such as “learning with laptops” being rolled out to younger generations, should we limit the time spent reading digitally to enable proper mental growth?

Building on this, it may be worth looking at the effects of digital reading amongst those who actively utilise it, particularly in relation to grades achieved in their respective institutions. Obviously, there is great potential in terms of research and access to information when it comes to digital reading - developments in technology have enabled the sharing of information that would have been previously hard to attain a lot more simple. Hayles discusses that a problem with students, and a complaint that she was hearing quite a lot from professors and teachers, was that the task of reading a book was becoming something that students would complete less and less, leading to a petition to abandon the novel and incorporate short stories into the curricula (Hayles [Article]), something believed to be attributed to the sheer density and lack of supporting information about the books in question (Blankenberg). However, the tools offered through digital reading offer various aides with regards to reading and studying the material in question. Text encoding, search tools such as Jstor and Google books, sites like Wikipedia and Literature online among many, many others have opened access to literature to be viewed through this digital reading medium, all in methods that would have taken a lot longer prior. Search tools are now embedded into digital devices so you can jump to a specific phrase within a piece of literature, so one would not even have to go searching for a particular line. On top of all of this, most of these search tools dynamically fit the screen of the device it’s being explored on, so everything fits into place like a jigsaw for the convenience of the user. So with all of these tools at hand, this would imply a greater increase in a student’s drive to learn independently, but unfortunately, this is not entirely the case.

Returning to Hayles, and this is continuing on from the previous challenge I referred to, reading on the web is causing us all to be distracted (Hayles [Keynote]). According to her information, the more hypertext links seen by a person in a document, and in general, the less that person will be able to absorb what he/she is reading, and the less enjoyment the person get out of it. As a result of this, students, particularly in third level institutions, have abandoned the task of actually reading a story completely, opting instead to utilise the tools mentioned above to read summaries and specific sections of the material required instead (PBS FRONTLINE Digital Nation). In an video titled Do You Still Read Books: Students Respond, conducted by American PBS subnetwork Digital Nation, third level student were interviewed in relation to their apparent increasing disassociation with reading. Their answers were upsetting and surprising, as if they had were in shock and awe that in today’s age someone would actually pick up and read a book. I’ve included some of their responses below;

“I’ve read a lot of little pieces of books, so you could say I’ve read a book”

“If something is assigned for class and I don’t particularly like the length or look of the book I’ll look it up online”

“I don’t read books anymore, it’s all about googling the stuff”

“Someone will be reading in class and I’ll be on the back on Facebook, checking my phone, doing anything [to not pay attention]”

“I read Romeo and Juliet online in 5 minutes”

“I think it’s all happening so fast, but in retrospect I don’t think people will regret changing from print to digital” (PBS FRONTLINE Digital Nation)

The last quote seems to contradict what the other voices are echoing - if people are only reading short bursts of information they require, are they truly learning anything? According to Hayles, the mind working in a fashion that there are two primary processes occurring in relation to memory; the short term “working” memory and the long term memory. For something to be absorbed into the long term memory, i.e, learned off, it must be fed in through the working memory. The more activity the brain processes (such as scrolling, clicking navigating etc,) the information the long term memory is available to absorb, leading to a loss of retained information (Hayles [Keynote]). If a student explicitly reads the information needed for an assignment, the likelihood that it will be retained is diminished. In this respect, print reading is superior, allowing for more understanding and retention of material, and the practical uses of digital reading are being abused to a degree.

Professor Alan Liu, from UCLA, details a class he ran in relation to utilising digital reading. To attempt to teach the class Romeo and Juliet, he displayed ‘Romeo and Juliet: A Facebook Tragedy’ (Hayles [Article]) which told the whole story through wall posts and photo comments and of course Montagues being friends with Montagues and Capulets being friends with Capulets. Although interesting, the structural integrity of the story is being compromised and rejigged for a modern audience - promoting the notion that the like of Facebook are platforms that can be integrated into the learning experience. While this may be effective in earning the interests of others, it is essentially bastardising the source material in favour of conforming to one of the negative factors the digital era has introduced, laziness (see included annotation for Facebook to see a public representation of this apparent laziness) (Best of Tumblr; Facebook). As it stands, it would seem that rather than reading books in the evenings, students, as well as people in general, are reading and writing on blogs and social media sites as opposed to utilising digital reading from the humanities perspective of reading and studying literature. We have already established the the humanities are not about creating material, but rather critiquing it, so are the individuals that I had criticized at the beginning of this essay right for having been slow to accept the changes to the humanities, brought on by digital reading?

But this select sample does not represent the majority, however - evidence given by Hayles suggests that people (students in particular) were beginning to reverse their decision on having these digital tools on hand, maybe even at the detriment of digital reading. In her paper, Hayles makes a note that a report from the National Endowment for the Arts in the US, entitled Reading on the Rise (published 2009), revealed that for the first time in over 20 years, there had been an increase in the uptake of reading novels and books, particularly within the 18 to 24 age bracket (National Endowment for the Arts). Perhaps if we look back at the seemingly alarming growth of laziness within students, we could argue that digital reading is not the immediate way forward, but a stepping stone to what something down the line might be more beneficial? To investigate this on a deeper level, I oversaw the conduction of an interview with a third level humanities student from Trinity College (to avoid bias) regarding the subject matter. The transcript of some select questions are below;

Q - In relation to physical books vs eBooks, what do you prefer to read from? A - Definitely a normal book, the feel of having a book in your hand is much better. plus you can never tell the definite length of an ebook, by looking at a real book you can determine its length and if you think you can manage it.

Q - Do you use a word processor to take notes while in lectures? A - I personally find it much easier to write notes, so I can highlight them and mark pages Q - Do you not think ebooks offer a more interactive experience? they can show inline videos and allow you to do exercises as opposed to simply reading. A - That's true, you’ll probably get the answers to quizzes straight away too, but there are facilities where you can combine the two idea, like the codes you would find inside state exam papers, then you can check your answers online later, That sounds better, you can’t cheat as easily.

Q - If someone bought you a tablet or Kindle, would you use it to read, bearing in mind eBooks are far less expensive to physical book? A - Call me a luddite, but I just don’t think it would be the same. Plus the idea of having to stare a a screen for hours would probably give me a headache, it’s more natural to me to read on paper.

(Blankenberg)

The general consensus from this particular interview resonated with the results of the Reading on the Rise report, which is very interesting. The notion that the candidate mentioned in relation to the the two disciplines coming together, appropriating the idea from the state exam commision, might be seen as a more attractive option to students and the public in general in relation to digital reading; in essence, you’re retaining the core values of traditional reading, meaning the mental changes referenced by Hayles aren’t completely over encumbering the subject’s mental state. If carried out correctly, this could be the next step in the path to achieving a sense of synergy between the two disciplines.

Hayles details in her keynote speech that web reading results in less efficient reading than print (Hayles [Keynote]). This encompasses casual screen readers (who are used to reading the likes of Buzzfeed and what have you) who often read while stationed on a toilet seat, as well as examining the more hardcore digital readers; those who have done away with print completely in favour of reading books on their kindles and iPads. From a personal standpoint, I believe she is right; I am guilty of such activity and use screens to read nowadays more than I do books. People are doing more screen reading in today’s world than ever before; the technology to is available, and is always decreasing in price as time goes on. However, to say that digital reading is the wrong way forward is a fallacy; the practical applications, on paper at least (pun not intended), are only going to improve on the methods of reading that we use today. It is true, the challenges are dangerous, and have already proven to be quite rife throughout certain institutional circles, but personal research and investigation, couples with Hayles anecdote in relation to Reading on the Rise, indicate that there is a state of limbo existing wherein a metaphorical polymerisation must occur between the two disciplines to move forward.To conclude, the possibilities and and the challenges brought on by digital reading are both broad areas, each with their own sizable features. For those who have already succumbed to the convenience of the current tools existing in relation to digital reading, as Hayles says;

“small routine tasks associated with web reading have an inordinately large impact in reengineering the brain, doing something small over and over again is one of the most effective ways to retrain neural circuits.” (Hayles, [Keynote])

By this logic, retraining the brain to read is possible in very small amounts, over and over again, and when coupled correctly with the discipline of digital reading, moreover digital humanities, I think some very thought provoking and inspiring things will begin to happen in the world of the humanities as a whole. 

Annotated Bibliography

Best of Tumblr; Facebook,. 2015. Web. 4 Dec. 2015.

Blankenberg, Antonia. Thoughts On Digital Reading. 2015. in person.

Butler-Kisber, Lynn. Teaching and Learning in the Digital World: Possibilities and Challenges 6.2 (2015): n. pag. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Catchen, Ruth. 'Reflections ~ How STEM Becomes STEAM'. STEAM 1.1 (2013): 1-4. Web.

Corder, Kirsten. 'Revising On The Run Or Studying On The Sofa: Prospective Associations Between Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour, And Exam Results In British Adolescents'. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (2015): n. pag. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Daiute, Colette. 'Educational Uses Of The Digital World For Human Development'. Teaching and Learning in the Digital World: Possibilities and Challenges 6.2 (2013): n. pag. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Hayles, Katherine. 'Keynote'. 2011. Presentation.

Hayles, N. Katherine. 'How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine'. ADE Bulletin (2010): 62-79. Web.

Michel, Lincoln. 'INFOGRAPHIC: The History Of Print'. Electric Literature. N.p., 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

National Endowment for the Arts,. Reading On The Rise. Washington DC: arts.gov, 2009. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

PBS FRONTLINE Digital Nation,. Do You Still Read Books: Students Respond. 2010. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Byzantine chant in the 21st century: Reviving the lost sound of Hagia Sophia 11th December, 2015

Built in the 6th Century, the church of Hagia Sophia was a former Orthodox basilica that was later converted into a mosque at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Known for its prayer office and music, which were of a Christian affiliation, the basilica’s music and unique hymnal service was shut down, being heard for the last time in the 1400’s. This short essay will set out to detail the fall of Byzantine chant that was once sung there, as well as its resurface in the 20th century at the hands of scholar Alexander Lingas and Capella Romana who sought to recreate the sound of Hagia Sophia for a modern audience. Though an essay sets out to answer a question through arguments, I would instead like to bring you along the journey of this lost music and then ask you to answer a question yourself at the end.

In the world that we live, there exists a musical culture that values arid, explicit and competent sound - music that is direct, organised with purpose and easy to listen to. This artistic inclination has existed for over a century, dating back to the early 1900’s, and it has altered the relationship humans have had with music up to this point. Prior to this onset, we were subjected to music that was largely focused on speech and scripture, featuring chant that reverberated in stone structures that would make individual words and phrases muddled and uncogent. In contrast to this, more modern musics featured electro-acoustic reverberations which were void of local noise and fed into environments that were complemented and focused the music (Romana, 2013). This contrast allowed for individual words to be heard clearly.

This music that existed prior manifested itself in a form of adaptation; scripture provided the grounds on which modern day song would eventually grow out of, following the spread of Christianity out of Rome after the time of Constantine. One branch of this music that acts as a key pillar within the field is Byzantine chant - a staple of the Eastern Orthodox Christian rite (Lingas, 2015). The most important points of development in this chant can be seen firstly in Jerusalem, then later on in Constantinople after bans on Christian practice had been lifted (these two places had produced two distinct types of chant, but these would eventually amalgamate into one for by the end of the first century). The development of this rite was not going to occur without a functioning epicentre within the Eastern Orthodox realm. This is where we encounter Hagia Sophia.

“They say that if walls could talk, each building would have a story to tell, but few would tell so many fascinating stories in so many different voices as the Hagia Sophia, or holy wisdom.” (Wall, 2015)

The Church of Hagia Sophia was constructed on order of the emperor Justinian at the end of the 6th Century. The concept behind the building came from St John of Christendom, Archbishop of Constantinople at the end of the 300’s (Lingas, 2015), who was able to secure support and funding from the empire. What is unique to Hagia Sophia is its construction; the church was built for the oration of chanted scripture, and it had a vast number of performers to carry out this task (with numbers only increasing as years went on given the support of Emperor Heraclitus) (Lingas, 2015). This chant was part of the Hagia Sophia Rite - the sung book of Ecclesiastes - something that is celebrated by catholic churches all over the world. The construction of the church featured a raised platform (or ambo) which was dedicated to singers. The rite was a growing trend within the church at its time, which provokes the question as to how we follow a largely monastic approach to celebrations today, something to be touched on later.

The rite celebrated many prayer offices that run parallel to the monastic tradition, including matins, nocturnes and lods as well as Easter minor offices (tirthekte). Matins had become such an important feature of the local lifestyle that on certain days during the year (twice weekly according to Lingas) the office celebration would continue out of the church with its audience, processing through the city and eventually leading into another church to conclude the service (this is backed by evidence discovered in 10th Century Documents) (Lingas, 2015).

As much as Byzantine chant is being applauded here, it is important to mention that the practice was seriously stalled and eventually halted. Hagia Sophia was the biggest church constructed under the Eastern Orthodox brand, and has been host to different religious denominations throughout its life -having spent 57 years as a Roman Catholic church (hybrid monastic office had been established for this period,focusing on Constantine/jerusi hybrid place of worship [Lingas, 2015]), it then became a place of orthodox practice as a consequence of the Byzantine Reconquest, but it would not remain a church for long after this; having been weakened by the Crusades, Constantinople was relinquished to the Ottomans in 1453, renaming the land Istanbul (Wall, 2015). After roughly 3 days of pillaging, the ottoman sultan of the time was impressed with its grandeur, and immediately rededicated it to Allah, and proclaiming that it would become the new imperial mosque of the ottomans.

This fall resulted in the literal and metaphorical burial of the music Hagia Sophia had inspired; The building of the Justinianic structure brought with it the introduction of 2 new forms of music: the chanted sermon (or the kontakion [long version Konakion on the Mother of God at the Cross], introduced by Romanos Melodos) (Khan Academy, 2015) and a special hymn called the Cherubikon which was performed at the offertory procession (bringing bread and wine to the altar). This new repertory together with the psalms (sung by 25 designated Psaltai who sung under the Ambo) (iconsofsound.stanford.edu, 2011) intended to balance the chanting of an elite choir coupled with the congregation singing the refrains. This was very successful while it lasted, but the practise was lost during the collapse of Constantinople in the 13th Century. Fortunately, however, the practice has been revived for today’s audiences through the academic research and instigation of scholars, including perhaps one more notable than others, Alexander Lingas.

Alexander Lingas, a scholar of the byzantine music field and lecturer of music at City University London, has dedicated his life and career to the field of music, specialising in Byzantine chant and holding the case study of Hagia Sophia close to his research. Much of his scholarly work also ties into performance, specifically in relation to his acapella ensemble, Cappella Romana (Lingas, 2011). The capella has been host to projects, one of the most prominent being an early music project, focusing on byzantine chant and the transmission of it’s musical heritage to the west. Lingas, along with the Cappella Romana, set out to recreate not just the music, but the sound of Hagia Sophia, something that proved to be quite a challenge. (Lingas, 2015).

As it exists today, Hagia Sophia bares the marks of the transitions it has been through - buttresses have been added outside of the church and minarets have been added by the Ottomans which have altered the unique acoustic of the basilica’s dome. Also, even in the event that this could be corrected, the basilica has been converted into a museum, now not affiliated with any specific religious group, making any recreation inside of Hagia Sophia (Countryman.com, 2015). As a music scholar, Lingas’ studies and interactions with his mentors and lecturers enabled him to gain a deep understanding of the text and chant that had come from Byzantium, featuring himself describing his journey as “that of a missionary” seeking out the secrets to the neumatic notation and seeking to replicate the sound correctly (Youtube, 2011). The final piece of the puzzle lay in recreating the sound within Hagia Sophia yet that it the one thing he was unable to accomplish. So how did he handle this issue?

In 2011, Stanford University pitched a project entitled ‘Icons of Sound’ to Lingas after some correspondence. A collaboration between Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics and Department of Art & Art History, the project attempted to capture the aesthetics and acoustics of Hagia Sophia digitally, to enable software engineers and sound engineers to reproduce the sound through digitally created environments. According to the official Stanford website for the project, the research employs textual, visual and musicological research, balloon pops, video, the building of architectural and acoustic models, auralisations and, finally, the recording of Byzantine chant sung by the members of Cappella Romana. To capture the fine details of the Basilica’s sound, the Stanford research teams went to great lengths to achieve pitch perfect replication, “This sensation of moving water, achieved through the visual animacy of shimmering surfaces, was simultaneously enhanced by the wet acoustics of the space. With echoes lasting slightly over 10 seconds, human breath emptied in the form of chanting was transformed into the sound of water splashing against the walls,” (Iconsofsound.stanford.edu, 2015).

Now that they had found their way of finally conveying the true sense and feel of Hagia Sophia, they began to rehearse for a suite of performances within Stanford University’s Bing Hall (Romana, 2013). The comments that responded to the performances can be seen via the link below in the Bibliography, but I’ve included a select few to illustrate the significance of form’s return;

“this is nice...now think about this: records show us that in sundays, Hagia Sopha housed up to 250-300 psalts that were responding to the liturgy. That was a feast for the ears. I myself had tha rare chance to visit Sophia in December and there were little to no visitors except me, my wife and some friends. I sang a piece of Agios o Theos, I tone by Ioan Palasis...the resonnance blew me...its really breathtaking...” (Romana, 2013 [user; nasucbt])

“I went to Istanbul last month. Listening to this recording, imagining this sound in Hagia Spophia, the word peace springs to mind: Hagia Sophia is in a way a symbol for peace, how different cultures can live together, side by side, respecting each other believes - something we we could really do with in this time and age..... The sound of these voices manages to capture this peaceful harmony. Thank you and congratulations to everybody involved in this project!” (Romana, 2013 [use; Suzanne Schmelzer])

The comments above detail just how much the true sound of Hagia Sophia has resonated with the public, in contrast to the much more ‘organised’ sound mentioned in the opening paragraph.

I challenge the reader to go and listen to Cappella Romana’s recreation, and to ask this question of yourself - how does the music make you feel? My personal experience listening to the performance was overwhelming - I would consider it to be far superior and bone chillingly more enticing to listen to than the likes of today’s music. The above statements identify that there is room for a return of this music form, maybe not with regards to its intended purpose, but for the sake of pleasurable listening. With the digital surroundings created by Stanford, it’s only a matter of time before it is distributed - one can only hope that more groups like Cappella Romana, lead by bright mind such as lingas, can establish themselves and make Byzantine chant relevant again. For now however, Byzantine chant has been resurrected, and the rite of Hagia Sophia is once again alive.

Bibliography/Works Cited

Countryman.com, (2015). Stanford University Recreates Acoustics Of Hagia Sophia At Bing Concert Hall | Countryman Associates, Inc.. [online] Available at: http://www.countryman.com/stanford-university-recreates-acoustics-of-hagia-sophia-at-bing-concert-hall [Accessed 10 Dec. 2015].

Iconsofsound.stanford.edu, (2015). Icons of Sound. [online] Available at: http://iconsofsound.stanford.edu/index.html [Accessed 10 Dec. 2015].

Khan Academy, (2015). Khan Academy. [online] Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/byzantine1/constantinople-east/a/hagia-sophia-istanbul [Accessed 10 Dec. 2015].

Lingas, A. (2011). The origins of Russian music. Introduction to the Kondakarian Notation. Revised, translated, and with a chapter on relationships between Latin, Byzantine and Slavonic church music by Neil K. Moran. By Constantin Floros. Pp. xix+312 incl. 16 figs, 3 catalogues of neumes, 25 musical examples and 60 tables. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2009. £41.90. 978 3 631 59553 4. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 63(01), pp.133-134.

Lingas, A. (2015). Dr Alexander Lingas. [online] City University London. Available at: http://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/alexander-lingas [Accessed 9 Dec. 2015].

Lingas, A. (2015). The Lost Music of Hagia Sophia.

Romana, C. (2013). Icons of Sound: Cappella Romana in a virtual Hagia Sophia - Cherubic Hymn in Mode 1. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKLkJJ3ftIw [Accessed 11 Dec. 2015].

Cormack, R., Haldon, J. and Jeffreys, E. ed., (2008). The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. 1st ed. London: Oxford University Press, pp.915-935.

Wall, K. (2015). It's a church. It's a mosque. It's Hagia Sophia. - Kelly Wall. [online] TED-Ed. Available at: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/it-s-a-church-it-s-a-mosque-it-s-hagia-sophia-kelly-wall [Accessed 10 Dec. 2015].

YouTube, (2011). Dr. Alexander Leonidas Lingas speaks at conference. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-5b_MKlDgA [Accessed 10 Dec. 2015].

‘Marching Band’ Culture; An Ethnographic Examination 14th December, 2015

The Marching Band - “an ensemble of musicians that march in time to the music for entertainment at events and in parades” according to Dictionary.com’s 21st century lexicon. When we think of marching bands, and the music played by them, there’s not a lot of analysis that goes on in our heads - we listen, but associate the music and performance with the context of the event, not examining any other potential purpose for their existence. So if I were to ask you what you thought of marching band as culture, you’d probably be left scratching your head. The ethnographic examinations of this are more in depth than you would imagine, leading the idea of marching band music culture to be more than just an idea, but an interesting evolution of something that developed out of a music scene to become a budding culture in today’s world. I have chosen to report on this emerging culture, and have conducted an interview ( which has given rise to some items worth examining not only in terms of content, but in terms of the interview process itself) with a member of a well established marching band in Dublin, the Finglas Concert and Marching Band, which you can examine below.

As an outsider going into this interview, I had to pick my questions carefully - I did not want to be subject to any ethical issues that come with this sort of work, so I ensured that the questions I composed were as broad and indiscriminate as I could get them to be.

Interviews can be be tricky - you can be as prepared as possible when beginning, with a highly structured plan or idea of how the interview will go, but the attitude and breadth of knowledge of the candidate largely dictates how the interview will actually transpire. This is an issue I faced; the band member I interviewed, a lovely girl named Antonia (who is in an undergraduate at Trinity college), was very cooperative in answering the questions I had put to her, but while I had attempted to engage with her on a seemingly academic level (you can view the questions below), I think they may have ultimately been the downfall of the interview process. The questions I had asked, I thought, were clear and broad enough to allow for her own interpretation, which I had hoped would lead to open ended answers, yet a lot of the time the answer I received was “Yeah, definitely”, something which came across as another way of saying “I’m not too sure of this topic, so I’ll just agree with him for the sake of the interview”. While this was not always the case, I found that I could have probably achieved a lot more from the interview if she had been given a chance to see the questions beforehand, but the potential for background research would have then been possible, leading to potentially spoiled results (this is also the reason I didn’t conduct an email interview). Also, timing was a big issue - I had a list of questions that extended far beyond the ones I actually had the time to answer as she has to take off for her lecture.

With regards to the actual content extrapolated from the interview, it was very relevant to the questions I was asking, but to say all of it was useful is debatable. As a member of this band for 10 years, Antonia is a well seasoned member of this cultural practice, but I think that a lot of the questions I put to her were out of her depth, at least in terms of academia (I probably would have benefitted more from asking more simplistic questions).

Having established the notion that Marching Band Culture is indeed a genuine culture (which had been established in 2004 by musicologist Kimberly Bohannon in her book “Musicology as culture: Aesthetics, Identity and Representation), I attempted to extract information from her with relation to her own experiences in the band. This lead to slightly subjective responses, which I had expected, but she tended to answer as honestly as she could - unfortunately this lead to answers that were quite short, which in turn lead to the frequent answer of “yeah, definitely” which I mentioned above. Also, I constantly felt the need to explain terms to her, something you can see in the transcript - this is probably standard in relation to these interviews, given some people’s lack of knowledge in relation to ethnographic terms.

Her answers with regard to the idea that marching band practices might be systemic were very interesting, though; her responses were thought provoking, leading to the notion that new cultures may adopt a systemic approach to things willingly initially so they have a foundation to build their own culture on, before adopting a rhizomic approach. Also, her responses to the concept of cultural appropriation gave rise to the theory that subcultures appropriate from each other, but this also ties into the notion that the entire culture is a systemic slave to the American ideologies it stemmed from (Antonia doesn’t believe this is the case, instead saying there’s nothing more that could be done differently).

Ultimately, the process of the interview was acceptable; I may not have been able to ask all of the questions I had prepared, and the candidate may not have been the most insightful of individuals, but the conversation gave rise to the identification of different types of subcultures within this relatively unknown existing culture of marching bands. It also gave rise to questions of authenticity and identity within the culture (if all of these band follow the same template, are they truly different from each other?), the effectiveness of cultural spread through social media (viral videos of figure marching) and questionable musical indoctrination (playing to people’s emotions by transmitting seasonal music). If I were to conduct another interview, I would ensure there was enough time to conduct it adequately, as well as simplifying the questions for the benefit of the candidate.

Transcript Follows; Interview (Items in bold denote the interviewer, items in unformatted text denote candidate)

This is Antonia Blankenberg, percussionist for the Finglas Concert and Marching Band. I have her here to answer a few questions on the potential for ethnographic study with relation to the properties of Marching Band Culture - a relatively new and emerging culture that has grown out of a scene.

Q - How are you today?

I’m good, how are you? I’m good, the weather’s terrible though! Q - So how long have you been in the band for? 10 years That’s a long time.

Q - So you’re a long time member of the Finglas Concert and Marching Band, would you like to give us some small details about your time there and about the band as a whole? So, the band is a local marching band [local to Glasnevin] that aims to teach children in the area music through our lesson program which feeds into the marching band. We also compete nationally, we’ve marched in parades nationally and internationally...yeah.

Q - Whereabouts have you marched? In New York, Birmingham, all over Ireland For any specific occasion or just in general? St. Patrick’s Day Oh St Patrick’s Day! Were you invited over? Did you make your own way over? How did that come about? I’m not sure haha, you’ll have to ask Gavin [the conductor] Fair Enough

Q - So, as a member of this marching band you’re well versed in the workings of a marching band. Now your marching band is different, it isn’t collegiate, it’s not a high school band, you’re marching band was set up independently. Yeah.

Q - Right. You might not know this, as an Irish marching band - I think it’s a relatively new thing in Ireland as opposed to what you see in other continents. This whole idea of marching band as a culture is a relatively new concept - something that was kind of first spoken about in great detail by musicologist and marching band conductor Kimberly Marshall Bohannon. She wrote a book in 2004 - it was an ethnography, which is a study of a culture, called “Marching Band as Culture: Aesthetics, Identity and Representation”. It tries to highlight the marching band as a music scene that evolved into a culture - a music scene being almost a lengthy musical fad - that would have died out, but it didn't. Before kind of asking an important or in depth questions, what do you think about marching band as a practice that has turned into a culture? Do you think it’s fair to say that it is a culture now, or would you have described it previously as a scene? Em ,I think it’s definitely a culture, because 1) it’s been around...our band has been around for about 20 years, and even the book you mentioned was written 11 years ago, so it’s definitely not a fad or a scene, because if it was It wouldn’t exist right now would it? It’s even grown stronger with...like you have high school marching bands, you have collegiate marching bands, military bands, local bands like ours, and it’s growing even bigger now.

Q - Do you think that it’s a relatively new thing in Ireland though? Well we have some band that have been around in Ireland a very long time - like you have the Irish army band, which is a marching band, and they've been around a very very long time. But with local bands, they are a lot newer, ones like ours or the Artane marching band or DCB - they're really new in comparison.

Q - You said the band is 20 years old now - do you think that over the course of these 20 years that the idea of an Irish marching band has kind of grown significantly? Yeah definitely. You see, we've been competing for nearly the whole time I’ve been in the marching band, and when we first started we were in a group of maybe 5 or 6 bands, whereas now our category has grown much bigger in national competitions, so obviously there are more bands that are up and running that we compete against.

Q - So it's fair to say that it’s a well established culture, especially if you’re competing on a national level? Yeah, definitely.

Q - What about internationally? Do you think you could end up competing internationally against other bands, whether they’re collegiate, independent or high school teams from the states? You see, our band is really small in comparison to collegiate and high school bands, because they’d have, you know, a program in their educational institutions where you could take a class - whereas we’re a local band that run on the weekends with one midweek practice, so it’s very optional as opposed to...like for collegiate bands you'd have to show up every day or every second day to get your grade. Fair enough.

Q - Well, as you said quite rightly, it’s been 11 years since Bohannon wrote her book, which means the idea of a marching band has had a lot of time to establish itself as a culture, you know, only growing in size and notoriety. You might even argue that the culture has given rise to various scenes contained within it - as you were saying, we have college marching bands that compete against each other and showcase themselves at football game halftime shows, we have ceremonial bands such as army marching bands and imperial marching bands, we have marching bands established for the sake of existing within the culture, such as your own. These have made themselves prominent and notable in the public eye, now boasting their own unique websites/presences on social media. You see on Youtube and Facebook people posting and sharing videos of bands that do figure marching such as the Ohio State Marching Band - you always see them during half time shows during football matches, they're always doing these big extravagant things. Then you obviously have parades and the contests that you’ve spoken about yourself both, nationally and internationally. To say the practice is merely a scene could be considered a fallacy, do you think? Yeah definitely. it’s just like you said, there's too many things going on in the world of marching bands, you can't just call it a fad or a scene or whatever, so yeah.

Q - Getting into the Cultural detail of things now - for something to be established as a culture, there has to be kind of certain things that are in place, and one of these is the notion of musical expression, like how we experience music and feel it. There was another musicologist called Philip Bohlman who says in his book ‘Ontologies of Music’ that “music may be what we think it is, it may be not” which was said kind of in relation to music as a sort of form of language and expression - the idea that you don't really need justification for what you feel, that music will almost provoke an emotion based off it’s context. The music produced by a Marching Band, it kind of varies; you have pieces of music composed specifically for the marching band to the point where you might consider marching band music to be its own genre, but it may also rely on music arrangements of pieces of pop music, you know, I’m sure your band has played arrangements of pop pieces, have they? Yeah, definitely, we have...in our marching repertoire we have mostly pop pieces as opposed to pieces specifically composed for marching bands like.

Q - These obviously wouldnt be accompanied by the lyrics to the piece that you’d be playing, and they’d be modified so that they’d fit the kind of standard marching drumbeat, yeah? Yeah.

Q - So when Bohlman said that “music may be what we think it is, it may be not”, he kind of attempts to explain or define the notion that certain musics, such as the likes of tribal musics and chant, non lyrical musics, are indiscriminate and will kind of provoke feeling or evoke emotion - like if you were sitting down around a campfire and someone starts playing a drum beat on a traditional talking drum it might make you feel like you want to dance or even...you know, chant makes you feel spiritual almost - do you think the music of a marching band has the ability to kind provoke any sort of emotion? Well, yeah because...say...one of our marches is the national anthem and we have the Dublin Millennium March which also obviously comes from Dubin, so when you hear them you feel almost...patriotic...a lot of nationalism comes into play, you're playing something that represents something, like people will know “oh that’s Irish, that’s from Dublin” and they want to connect with that. Then also there's like fanfares and this upbeat pop music that makes people feel happy - it’s related to, if you were like, marching in a parade, it’s generally a time of celebration, so St. Patrick’s Day or as was said already at halftime shows in collegiate marching bands, it’d be a time of celebration so people would be, like, associating that music with being happy and being...celebrating things.

Q - In terms of the kind of pieces that you’d play, like pop music pieces, is there anything in your...if you just give me an example of a piece from your marching repertory? Do you have any like upbeat jazzy pieces? Well we have four pop pieces that we play while we march - we have Louie Louie, Smooth, Smoke on the Water and Low Rider - so they're all very upbeat pieces, but we modify the tempo a bit to match the marching type of speed, to match what we’re doing, but even then they’re still very upbeat, they’re still very...like, we play them very loud, very...like….drawing attention to us basically.

Q - And you play those all the time? Yeah, we have one set of pieces that we’ll play on repeat as we march.

Q - Would you have any kind of occasional pieces that would suit the season? Obviously around this time of the year you might do christmas music, or for Hallowe’en you might play, you know, certain pieces that would evoke the emotions that would come standard with those seasons? Well, around Hallowe’en we’d play stuff like Thriller, whereas Christmas we’d obviously, because it’s so cold outside, we wouldn’t be marching, but if we’re playing at a concert we’d have Christmas pieces.

Q - So you would agree then that marching bands would fit into this category then that it’s a form of music that will kind of evoke emotion and expression, I mean, given that you’re kind of playing to people’s emotions by helping them instill a sense of the season within them? Yeah, definitely, because the pieces we play will match when we’re playing them. Yeah, that’s fair enough.

Q - So another features of a culture, especially a new culture, is the idea of appropriation. Now if you don’t know what this means it’s the idea that a culture will borrow certain traits from other cultures, or other, kind of, aspects of society. This can be seen in particular in new and emerging cultures. There was a musicologist called Steven Friedson who spent a lot of his time with a tribe in Africa called the Ewe Brekete Tribe, and he noticed that their tribe had adopted certain aspects of the Islamic religion in their own cultural practices. The term “Marching band” has been around for a long time actually - you were saying yourself that marching bands have existed for centuries almost earlier on, that you’ve always had this idea of a military marching band, and now you’ve got casual marching bands - but the original marching band goes back to ancient times, and it was used to describe travelling musicians or travelling bands of people who performed who would perform at festivals, these ye olde classical type fetes. This term has since been appropriated or borrowed in different ways, and each time it has been borrowed by a different party they have added, kind of, aspects to the term creating, a natural evolution of the idea of a marching band. The most significant of these is obviously the military appropriation; you’ve got, you know, back during the american civil war you'll have the drummer boy who’ll keep the marching beat for war purposes, to make sure everybody follows a certain discipline. It’s kind of adopting the term marching band as a literal term for the first time, something which has obviously continued in practice up to today. From your own experiences in your own band, do you consider any of the things you do in the band to have been taken from elsewhere, like in particular, a lot of this has to do with the person who controls the band - he would kind of adopt certain practices that he would have learnt elsewhere. Do you think that your marching band uses any techniques, or does anything in a certain way that might have been appropriated from elsewhere? We have the drum patterns that you mentioned, so in between every piece you’d have myself or one of the other percussionists in the band playing a military style, kind of, pattern, just to keep everyone in step and to make sure something is being played in between each piece. So obviously that would like come from a military type of background. Just to keep everyone, as you said, disciplined and in step. Even then if we ever did figure marching the ideas come from our marching instructor Brian, who’s actually a trumpet player for the Irish army band. So you have more military influence coming from the army and as well.

Q - So...from that kind of idea, you could say that your marching band, as an independent form of marching band, is borrowing tropes or ideas from the idea of a military marching band. So you’ve kind of got almost an inter-cultural appropriation; you’ve got this whole idea of a marching band culture, and then sub cultures within that, like the collegiate marching band, the military marching band et cetera. And now you’ve got this idea of the independent marching band borrowing, kind of, ideas and methods from the military marching band. So appropriation is definitely alive and well in this culture, albeit not in the same light as Freidson who I mentioned earlier? Yeah, as it is in all cultures. Musically anyway. I hate to rush you but I need to be back in Trinity at 3. Right so, I’ve one more question here that I’ll ask you.

Q - With ‘Marching Band” culture kind of emerging as a relatively new culture in today’s world, there’s a chance that that it may be subjected to outside influence. And this kind of touches again on the idea of appropriation, but a culture will kind of display one of two behaviours when it comes to this. In terms of globalisation, these are called systemic and rhizomic adoption. Systemic adoption means that the culture will kind of kneel to outside influences and take them on the chin. The converse of this is rhizomic adoption, which means the culture intentionally goes out to resist outside influence, here being the niche audience to, like, each individual subculture. You can kind of argue that marching band culture has automatically fallen in line with American culture, ie systemic, given that collegiate bands in the US have kind of influenced marching bands elsewhere through kind of common tropes, which include baton twirlers, you know flamboyant uniforms, figure marching, all stuff like that. Do you think this is true, that the first US marching bands have kind of influenced the other types of marching bands that exist? Well yeah, because a lot of our idea for figure marching or for how pieces are arranged come from collegiate marching bands who tend to arrange pieces themselves, as opposed to us just...buying them or copying off someone else. Then you have, like...you have the idea of even, like, uniforms...like...obviously our uniforms don’t copy the army band uniforms, because we have feathers sticking out of our hats! But we take that idea from a lot of high school and collegiate bands, which would have brightly coloured uniforms with bells and feathers and all sorts of things. So your band has displayed these traits then? Yeah

Q - Do you think the appropriation of American tropes though may only be temporary? Because, again, this culture is relatively new, and the idea that you'd be borrowing from these other types of subcultures such as collegiate marching bands - these have been around longer than the independent marching band - do you think it’s only a temporary situation where you’re only borrowing these ideas like baton twirlers and uniforms and stuff? I know you haven't got any baton twirlers yourself, but in terms of other marching bands within the states and marching bands that come over here to march in the likes of the St Patrick's Day parade - they come over, they put on a show, they have frilly uniforms - do you think this is only a temporary situation, that the likes of an independent marching band will, kind of, establish their own cultural tropes or ideologies? I think the ideas we take from American collegiate bands are only growing due to marching bands getting more popular in parades and halftime shows and everything. So if band travel, say to Ireland, we see them in the parades, so we’re getting ideas off of them, but at the same time social media presence is growing, as you said Ohio State University’s marching band put on these huge shows, and they’re just getting more and more viral every time they do something, especially if they copy say a pop song that's gone viral at the time. So then their ideas will spread and get bigger, so I wouldn’t say it’s temporary at all, it’s becoming more and more of a growing thing. So you think at the heart of all this is the American marching band? Yeah, I think that’s where most people would get the typical image of a marching band from. Ok, I’m cautious of the time but if you don’t mind I’d like to fire one more question at you? Go on sure, we’re only supposed to be watching a movie in german anyway.

Q - The American marching band would have been heavily based off of a nationalistic view of America. Through that kind of thought process, this would be a form of systemic adoption, which means that American culture would have influenced the marching band, and because of the American marching band kind of influencing other established marching bands elsewhere, that they are all being affected by American culture. Do you think that we are ultimately falling for the idea of an American culture through systemic adoption?

Well, yes and no. Yes because we are taking a lot of their ideas, a lot of their tropes and bringing them to our own, but at the same time, here anyway, we’re putting an Irish twist on things so we’re playing Irish marches, like Dublin Millennium March where, like, a lot of the stuff we do...around Patrick’s day we play the national anthem, we play, like, in Dublin Millennium March we play Molly Malone which is a typical Dublin song, so we do add our own twist on it as well as copying...you know, our uniforms and our actual marching from America. Q - Is there anything you think your band could do to make it seem significantly more Irish? That there’s anything that would kind of break it off from, you know, the idea of American tropes? Well other than playing Irish music there isn’t an extreme amount of difference we can make. Like, uniforms vary from band to band anyway, so unless we made a major difference in how we look and how we sound there’s nothing that we can do.

Q -So do you think that the template for a marching band is as advanced as it’s going to get? Well, it can keep growing, but at the same time there’s only a certain amount of change you can make.

Well Antonia, I don’t want to keep you from missing your lecture. Last thing I want to do is start an intervarsity debate between the Trinity german department and the UCD school of music. Thanks very much for you time, it’s much appreciated! No bother at all, you better go to our next gig though!

Synge’s Riot-Inciting Playboy of the Western World 24th February, 2016

Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World is an Irish comedic drama that was first performed in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in January of 1907. An extraordinary mixture of comedy, tragedy, tenderness, violence, brutal reality and preposterous family, the play has evolved as an entity in the world of theatre, but initially launched to meet a less than impressive audience. It is ironic, in this regard, that the play would become such a controversial entity at the time of it’s release, being met with fierce and violent public opposition due to it’s content (to the extent that leading actor, William Fay, noted that a stage-hand kept the audience at bay only "by arming himself with a big axe, swearing by all the saints in the calendar that he would chop the head off the first lad who came over the footlights" [McKittrick]).

Now one of the most celebrated of Synge's dramatic works, Playboy follows the tale of Christy Mahon, a young man who arrives in a remote County Mayo village and enlivens the lives of the locals with his twisted tale of apparently committing patricide, an event which is attempted but ultimately fails twice. Synge attempts to conform to the preference of literary revival writers in establishing the context of the play as “near a village, on a wild coast of Mayo” (Synge), but this is only on a superficial level, as the play harkens to the conflict outside of the village’s protective bubble through Christy’s background, “fighting bloody wars for Kruger and the freedom of the Boers” (Synge). Ireland, at the time, was in tune with the events of the conflict and the Irish support that was being provided to the British forces, and Synge’s play offered a “hard edged” (Mathews) intervention into this seemingly innocuous world, painting the conflict as a moral changing phenomenon that turned its participants into “loosed khaki cut-throats” (Mathews).

Synge also believed himself to be dedicated to realism, depicting the social problems, religious domination, platonic marriages, alcoholism and insanity he witnessed, while also challenging the hippocratic nature of Catholicism (Synge himself a protestant). However, the general public did not feel the same way about his work, and it was not the political liberation they expected, the play instead proving to be a spotlight on Ireland’s recent and rebellious reality following the end of the Boer War (Mathews). Acting as a commentary on rural Irish life, with its characters’ vulgar language, the depiction of the character Shawn Keogh’s cowering servitude to the local priest, the violence of the ‘murder’ and the borderline deification by the villagers of a shameless ‘killer’, infuriated the Irish audience. In particular, as noted by Mercier Press, the apparent commodification of women (in reference to Christy Mahon’s quote “and what’d I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females standing in their shifts itself maybe, from this place to the Eastern world” – both the reference to girls as ‘chosen females’ and the mention of an undergarment) was the tipping point for many audiences, after which rioting would begin in the theatre (Mercier), causing the rest of the production to be acted out in Dumb Show for any remaining audience members.

It was suggested that Synge’s “anti-modern and anti-commerce beliefs were just another instance of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy attempting to keep the native Irish in medieval poverty” (McKittrick). 

The attention it had garnered lead to the public lambasting its content by politician Arthur Griffith, who was a pro Boer enthusiast, and called the play a "vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform” (McKittrick). On the converse, WB Yeats advocated Synge’s work, lecturing audiences from the stage of the theatre as they protested saying "You have disgraced yourself again - is this to be the recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?" (Mercier). The riots would not only take riots in Ireland, but also in New York and China in the 1930’s. Ironically, the riots only made the production more popular, and it remains one of Synge’s best known compositions.

Bibliography Mathews, P. J. The Cambridge Companion To J.M. Synge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.

McKittrick, David. "Celtic Drama: Ballad Of An Irish Playboy". The Independent. N.p., 2007. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.

Mercier Press Blog. "J.M Synge And The Playboy Of The Western World". 70 Years of Irish Publishing. N.p., 2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.

Synge, John Millington, and Aidan Arrowsmith. The Complete Works Of J. M. Synge. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2008. Print.

Francesco Geminiani in Dublin 8th March, 2016

In terms of who influenced musical culture in Dublin at this time, it’s easy to point fingers at those who stand out from the era and who have had a long lasting impact on the culture as a whole, such as Handel, whom patrick will talk about later. But one of the most interesting composers at the time, who also had ties with Dublin, was Italian violinist and composer Francesco Geminiani. At the height of his career, which would have been around eighteenth-century London, Geminiani was ranked alongside both Handel and Arcangelo Corelli (who Geminiani was a student of), both of whom heavily influenced English musical life at the time.

Geminiani's composition style transcended the style of the Baroque era, incorporating high levels of difficulty (in terms of playing style) as well adding erratic and unconventional dynamics. This ignorance to Baroque conventions gained him a lot of traction in the annals of music consumption across Great Britain and Ireland (where Geminiani lived for a short while), much of which was more positive than negative, and signalled a milestone in the beginning of the transition out of the Baroque era. His style was so intriguing that the Earl of Essex had requested that he became Master and Composer of the State Music of Ireland, something he would end up rejecting for unknown reasons, thought to be linked to his eventual imprisonment or his passion as a freelance composer. As stated above, in 1728, having run into serious debt through his passion for art dealing, Geminiani was imprisoned in London, but despite this mishap, he was freed from prison by the aforementioned Earl, and in 1732 he travelled to Ireland where his career took off at an unfathomable pace.

1732 marked the publication of two sets of concertos (which were marked Geminiani’s Opus 2&3 respectively, as was common at the time). These proved to be quite popular, selling in high numbers post-publication in both Ireland and Britain, solidifying Geminiani as a popular name in the world of composition and raising his reputation, something that might be comparable today with the likes of Hozier’s quick rise to fame.

This “Hozier-esque” rise to fame lead to him being requested to visit Ireland by the then-incumbent Baron of Tullamore. Despite arriving there with little to no money, he was able to capitalise on his success by performing public concerts, which earned him enough money to fund the opening of a combination concert hall and art gallery entitled “Geminiani's Great Room”. His continually rising popularity saw him travel between Dublin and London between 1733 and 1740.

Geminiani’s connection with Ireland is quite apparent, and his name began to carry such a weight he became thought of in the highest regards to his opinions. One such famous incident in the annals of Irish traditional music involved Geminiani during his stay in Dublin. Geminiani was told of the legendary skills of Ireland's greatest traditional musician, the Irish harp player Turlough O'Carolan, and decided to test his skills. Geminiani took an Irish melody, rewrote it in such a way that the original melody was well hidden, and sent it to be performed for O'Carolan. After listening to the piece, O'Carolan said, in Gaelic, that it was an admirable piece but that it "limps and stumbles," and he in turn played a corrected version of the music that restored the original melody. This was sent from Connaught, where O'Carolan lived, back to Dublin, where Geminiani gave the opinion that O'Carolan was a musical genius.

Despite the legacy he left behind him, Geminiani’s name escapes the public eyes in terms of lasting content by him. Dying in 1762, his downfall would become apparent and, 1761, on one of his sojourns in Dublin, a servant robbed him of a musical manuscript on which he had bestowed much time and labour. His vexation at this loss is said to have hastened his death. He is now thought to be buried in an unmarked grave at the top of O’Connell Street in Dublin City Centre.

A close reading of EM Hull’s The Sheik, Chapter 4 9th March, 2016

This extract is provided from the 4th chapter of EM Hull's “The Sheik”. The primary focus of this passage seems to revolve around the dynamic and relationship building that goes on between the Sheik and Diana Mayo. The scene takes place in The Sheik’s tent and, in the context of the story, takes place shortly after Diana has been raped, and is now being subjected to the Sheik’s capriciousness and ferocity.

The passage begins from the perspective of the titular character as he lies in bed with Diana, who is at this point being held against her will. Despite beginning with a seemingly overly descriptive paragraph, the choice of adjectives paints a vivid picture of Diana and the Sheik’s characters, Diana with her boyish figure in swing with her defiant head and the Sheik’s vocal adherence to the Islamist faith, who compares Diana’s mannerism to that of a horse (pointing to obvious objectification) and treats Diana like a slave, calling her back to him once his foot has struck her Jade necklace. This might also highlight Diana’s lack of interest for items that promote womanly beauty, something which adds to her tomboyish qualities. Diana returns to the Sheik with these “mutinous” eyes which completely convey her detestation and lack of respect for the man, and rightfully so. What happens next, however, defies the radical thoughts of the Sheik in the prior paragraph - we see a sort of empathy being conveyed by the Sheik at the sight of Diane’s discomfort at the sight of him, which he would have been savvy to at the sight of the colour leaving Diane’s face, and he begins to speak to her, albeit briefly, in a more calm and collected tone which might even provoke a sense of sympathy from the reader (“‘Take it. I wish it,’ he said silently”/”I have an artistic soul even though I am only an Arab.”/”he went on in the same soft voice”). This is obviously meant to attract Diana to him by capitalising on her emotions, but ultimately this fails and Diana rejects his ploy and, as /hull writes it, “the mockery was wiped out of his eyes in a flash, giving place to the usual ferocity” - in terms of how the reader is meant to perceive this, it is clear that we are supposed to interpret the Sheik as volatile and unpredictable, qualities which will ultimately add to the shock value of the twist towards the end when Diana falls for him.

The following paragraph gives us an insight into Diana’s state of mind, showing us just how much mental damage the Sheik is having on her, “she clenched her teeth on her lower lip until a rim of blood stained their whiteness”. She has become mentally fragile, and the tomboyish qualities she had shown before, painting her as a sort of female Indiana Jones, have receded back into her subconscious, now replaced entirely by survival instinct. And, to some degree, Hull attempts to impart this sense survival to us by detailing how Ahmed has gained such an advantage, “there was an inflection that came into his voice and a look that came into his eyes that was more terrible than any outburst”/”the fear of him was an agony”/”She had seen men shrink when standing near him”.

This monologue of fear ends with perhaps the most chilling of statements, “She would have to obey, as in the end he always forced her to obey”, essentially painting Diana as a slave as opposed to a prisoner, which was what her established role had been until now. Something notable here - in ultimately accepting defeat and taking the necklace, despite establishing the Sheik as a figure who instills fear within her, Diana has to tear her gaze from him and his apparent “compelling stare” -though compelling can be interpreted as something forceful, it can also be used to indicate something irresistible - Perhaps it is here that Hull is attempting to plant the seed that would grow into Diana’s attraction towards Ahmed? As a character who never truly felt love, it is quite possible that she would be susceptible towards her emotions in that regard. In either case, any feeling that may have existed is abandoned upon putting on the necklace, which rekindles Diana’s ability to fight back verbally. It is here again that Hull goes out of her way to describe the change of colour in her cheeks, which indicate to the Sheik that she is breaking out of her flaccid state, prompting him to incapacitate and dictate to her coldly what Diana has previously said to him, followed by confirmation that she is indeed being treated as his slave, “Would it not be wiser after what you have seen to-day to recognise that I am master?"/”you must realise that my will is law”. To the reader, this indicates that there is no easy escape for Diana, but the style of writing and choice of adjectives used to describe the motions of the Sheik are less than violent, leading to an air of contention as to what direction the story is taking, “his hand slipped to her shoulder, his fingers gripping the delicate, rounded arm”/It was a threat, but how much of it he meant to be taken literally she did not know.”

The following paragraph follows a mental recap through the eyes of Diana as she recalls the events of the day now behind her. While reflecting on the the events themselves might seem a bit like filler, the important thing to watch here is her acceptance of gender conventions - “the position of a woman in the desert”/”as a woman she need expect no mercy”/”her passionate desire to make her strong will and courageous spirit triumph over her coward woman's body”. She can’t argue against the facts here, as opposed to how she acted against her gender conventions prior (inspiring Lady Conway’s remarks at the beginning of the novel). Upon this acceptance, she examines Ahmed as he was pressed against her, realising that, apart from submission, there was only one way to escape the situation - “You had better kill me”. The imagery conveyed pits the muscular physique of the Sheik against the supposedly cowardly woman's body in a strange manner, mimicking a pose of two lovers embracing yet at the same time pointing Diana’s enslavement. Ahmed’s response to Diana’s defeating statement comes across as an admission of determination, that he will not admit defeat, pushing his feelings forcefully upon Diana -”I do not kill a horse until I have proved beyond all possible doubt that I cannot tame it”. He draws her in closer, much to Diana’s discomfort, who can only see the face of the man who murdered an innocent animal earlier. In fear of something similar happening to her, she admits defeat - much to Ahmed’s delight, who eagerly attempts to kiss her, a motion which is declined by Diana. Understanding he has bitten off enough to satisfy himself, he compliments her honesty and exits. Diana attempts to exit the room in what is one of the best metaphors in the novel, the curtain divide.

The curtain that divides the tent may be representative of the divide between the two, and just as Diana is about to exit, she turns and stares back at Ahmed (who is unaware of her voyeurism), wondering if she will ever ever understand him, him sparing her being a trigger to pique her interest, wondering if the “swift transition from ferocity to gentleness” was something she could never fathom - perhaps also triggering an emotional connection between the two?

Stravinsky and Modernism 1st May, 2016

“In the last half of the 19th century, the sleeping musical giant in Russia woke up with a bang” - Howard Goodall

While the unprecedentedly successful composer Tchaikovsky became well known amongst Russian Tzars and found fame throughout the world, it was the music of Modest Mussorgsky that profoundly influenced other composers, utilising quote/unquote “Russian” ingredients and sounds that not originating from Germany, Austria or Italy. When this music was first heard in Western Europe, it galvanised the composers that heard it, not least of all Claude Debussy, whom Gareth has just talked about at length. Russian music had re-emerged, and in the early 20th century it was to reach new levels of notoriety thanks to the startlingly unconventional music of a young composer, Igor Stravinsky.

Stravinsky was a principal composer of not only instrumental music but also vocal music in the first half of the 1900’s. Born in St. Petersburg 1882, he studied with Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov before catching the eye of Sergei Diaghilev who was an impresario, producer and importer of modernist music and Art from Russia to Paris. In a series of startling ballet scores - namely Firebird and more so Petrushka and The Rite of Spring - Stravinsky took the proverbial compositional rule book that was pioneered by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, only to completely do away with it away- modernism had spread to Russia.

Stravinsky, like Mussorgsky and Debussy before him, wanted to find a way of assembling a musical structure without using constantly developing motifs and tonal elements. Stravinsky, in particular, wanted to tell his ballet stories a different way. He created a montage of sorts or oral jigsaw, featuring one melody followed by a another followed by another, all in tumbling succession. Goodall says that this compositional method, with its short restless kaleidoscopic episodes - was “the form for which Stravinsky was born to compose”. (insert petrushka clip?)

In modern mediums of music transmission, we find the idea of musical collage and diversity - such as shuffle functions on media devices, bootlegs and mashups to be something that is completely normal. It’s easy to forget how bewilderingly unfamiliar an idea this was to the musical establishment of the early 20th century. When impresarios took Stravinsky’s second ballet, Petrushka, to Vienna in 1913, the scandalised musicians refused to play it, describing it as “dirty music”. All of the radicals - Mahler, Debussy and Stravinsky - were dismantling the old system whereby musical ideas carefully unfolded one thing after another. They wanted everything at once. Stravinsky, like all Russian composers, was, for lack of a better term, turned on by the rhythmic urgency of dance. But he did something very unusual with that rhythm. Whilst Mahler had layered melody on melody, tangled together like a twisted knot, and Debussy had manipulated blocks of adjacent sound overlapping one another, Stravinsky went one step further, superimposing simultaneous rhythms on top of each other. Polyrhythm, as it has since been dubbed, had long existed in African tribal drumming, something we would have covered in earlier semesters, and was improvised on the spot by highly intuitive and skillful players. But polyrhythm, conceived from scratch by a composer, written down on a page and then imposed on the western symphony orchestra player by player, this was an extremely novel concept. Again referring back to Goodall, he says “It was as if Stravinsky wanted the past and the present to coexist in one dimension; The prehistoric ritual of the dancers and the modern cacophony of the industrial world, and the only way he could conceive it was to make parallel, competing rhythmic patterns fight for the same space. It’s complicated, but it’s magnificent.”

It’s clear to see that Stravinsky has left his mark on the modernist rebellion of 20th century composition. Despite his unconventional compositional vehicles, he is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential composers of his time.

Monteverdi’s Surviving Venetian Operas: Themes, Style and Context 1st May, 2016

“It is sometimes not the originator of the idea, but the first person to show its full potential, who gives it a permanent place in human history” (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013).

Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona, Northern in 1567. Over the course of his career, he was employed to the court of the duke of Mantua, the Este family in Ferrara and as Choirmaster to St Mark’s Chapel of The Doge (the doge were an elected council of upper classmen within the city) in Venice (the most prestigious musical position in Italy next to the Papal composer). While he didn’t create the operatic form (that credit belonging to Peri and Caccini) (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013), he was the first widely renowned composer for the form, and pioneered many of the forms traits we recognise today. He is credited and recorded with having composed the first Opera to have been performed, ‘Orfeo’, in 1607 (Lawrence, 2015).

Between 1607 and 1643, Monteverdi composed 10 operas, of which only 3 have survived; Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland) and L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppaea), the latter two composed while he was resident choirmaster at St. Marks (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013). Below we will look at these surviving Venetian operas, analysing them in terms of their thematic entanglement with the compositional style of each opera, preceded by a brief context to the time they were written.

Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is Monteverdi’s 8th operatic composition. Based on the last part of Homer’s Odyssey, it is said to be archetypical of Venetian opera, essentially standing as a reflection on the genre (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013). Thematically speaking, the story the Opera is trying to convey is one of patience and it’s rewards, as well as how evil and betrayal are ultimately going to be defeated as justice prevails. Told in a 4 act performance (3 acts and a prologue), the style and technique are designed to compliment this examination of conscientious values (which would have been included in the argomento, or preface, to the libretto).

This was Monteverdi’s first revisit to the genre in 10 years, but he was sure to bring the sum of his experience with him upon returning to it. The style of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria encompasses a variety of the compositional practises displayed by Monteverdi in his prior work. While he reuses recitative, strophic variation and canzonetta here, as he had used too when composing Orfeo, he experiments with concitato style (repeated notes used to heighten tension), something he had dabbled with while composing his 8th madrigal book two years prior (Castong, 2004). Also, recitative is used here almost as an integral part of the opera’s raison d’etre - Monteverdi highlights that the opera should exemplify a sense of unanimity between the different compositional styles available to the composer (something recitative enables him to do, and something we also see present in L'incoronazione di Poppea), enabling Monteverdi to observe the audience’s acceptance of the “musical conventions of opera” (Carter, 2002).

According to musicologist Gary Tomlinson, in reference to the consistent use of this recitative, “Realistic acts and situations can be seen to accentuate the unreality of the medium in which they are presented” (Castong, 2004). Librettos with a hyper realistic cast of characters, human or otherwise (such as the titular Ulysses) potentially increase the complication that arises when it come verisimilitude (the appearance, and in this case, maintenence, of something appearing as being real). Song seems to have been designated only to characters who are agrarian, or to situation that were appropriate for it’s inclusion, such as moments of love, scenes of absurdity and comedy etc, but apart from this, recitative was employed in attempt to preserve this sense of verisimilitude (Prunieres, 1924).

Despite his lust for experimentation with technique, Monteverdi also wanted to adhere to social convention when composing the Opera. At the time, the Venetian audience had a growing appetite for arias and song, but in the context of the story they were adhering to, he and composing partner Giacomo Badoaro (who composed the Libretto) faced difficulty in justifying the need to include arias for characters (Castong, 2004). As stated above, however, they made quite substantial use of arias, especially when it came to scenes featuring deities (eg, in the first act when the Gods communicate in decorated song). It is fair to say, in this case, that the presence of an Aria indicates a scene of thematic significance, also indicating that Monteverdi closely entwined theme and style in the specific context of the opera. Through the very subtle mixture/use of song, harmonic symbolism and recitative, Monteverdi achieves what he wanted in preserving the verisimilitude of the characters and the opera. He is able to demonstrate his control over the handling of issues that arise and his thorough knowledge of the workings of the human mind (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013).

L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643) L'incoronazione di Poppea the final opera composed by Monteverdi and, as one would guess, is the apex of his work as an operatic composer, both in terms of compositional style and the congruency of the structure of the story being told with the music composed in tandem with it. A 3 act composition (originally meant to be 5) (Lawrence, 2016), the opera was a tragedia, based on the Roman emperor Nero’s illicit affair with the ambitious Poppaea Sabina, and is considered to be one of the first ever operas to describe historical events and people, as opposed to fictitious content revolving around original ideas and legends, which was known as Incogniti style (the incogniti were groups of organised adults who would utilise opera as a way of conveying drama and the poetics of philosophers, some being a member of the accademia degli encouraging the fronting of historical facts for educational purposes) (Lawrence, 2016). The titular character, Poppaea, is able to marry Nero and be crowned empress. Despite being labelled as one of the “surviving” Venetian manuscripts, an original the libretto does not actually exist, with copies showing varies to each other leading to a controversial uncertainty over how the work should be performed (Carter, 2004).

Poppaea is often considered to be Monteverdi’s magnum opus of operatic composition, but it lacks the variety of instrumentation and creativity that was present in Orfeo, and this is largely down to the purpose of it’s creation- because it was written for a commercial theatre, as opposed to being being commissioned for a distinguished court, akin to Monteverdi’s previous work (Burkholder,Grout & Palisca, 2013). However, this does not stop it from overtaking Orfeo in terms of its depictions; human characters and their traits and passions are more elaborate and feel much more realistic, a trend that carried over from Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Lawrence, 2016). The love scene between Poppaea and Nero show his willingness to change styles frequently to reflect the characters and their feelings, and this again is done through Monteverdi’s penchant to utilise expressive recitative to maintain this sense of verisimilitude. Expressive recitative, which is often inflected with dissonances and chromaticism, are used to highlight particularly emphatic scenes throughout the opera (such as when Poppaea pleads for Nero to remain with her) (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013). Also, we see simpler recitation implemented for use when it comes to dialogue between characters, specifically including aria styles with ritornellos (which again carries over from Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, so there is a clear sign across the composition of the two Operas that Monteverdi is ever refining and furthering on the development of his technique), often composing passages in in triple time to indicate declarations of love from character to character (Castong, 2004) (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013). In between these passages lies a new technique to Monteverdi’s “compositional toolbox”, recitativo arioso, a style that lies between aria and recitative that is used in composition for solo voice, which is used. Monteverdi is noted here for having incorporated aria style where strophic verse wasn’t present, something which debatably may have damaged the maintenance of verisimilitude. The shifts between compositional/singing styles were indicated by heightened emotional expression, as again was the case with, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, as opposed to bright and chirpy attitudes conveyed by the performers. In this respect it is clear that style is used as a vehicle in Poppaea to serve dramatic goals within the opera (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013).

From examination of the content and style of composition, of both Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea, it is clear to see that the compositional techniques used in both are used to continuously acting as a proverbial vehicle or technique to further on the dramatic goals the opera in both cases. It is also obvious that, as Monteverdi and his style aged, he accepted and adopted new techniques that were surfacing as opposed to rejecting them when composing whatever was next for him, leading to a more interesting composition following what had come before as well as innovation on what had existed already, solidifying Monteverdi as a pioneer of composition, least of all in opera. This is support to the statement in Burkholder, Grout and Palisca’s A History of Western Music, which states the that Monteverdi was “the most innovative and imaginative composer of his day” (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013).

He was unafraid to adopt these new techniques, and even developed some of his own, trusting he could adapt them to suit the composition, even when it was difficult to do so, as seen with the pressured inclusion of arias/songs in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria. This adherence, however, led to one of his most acclaimed works, having adhered to Incogniti conventions for the composition of L'incoronazione di Poppea, so it’s fair to say that the blend of circumstances surrounding the composition of these operas, namely the context, compositional style and theme of the piece (in that order, when it came to composition), all aided in the creation of Monteverdi’s recipe for success. His influence would eventually spread through the circulation of his published works and the operas of his younger contemporaries (Burkholder, Grout & Palisca, 2013).

Bibliography

Burkholder, J., Grout, D., Palisca, C. (2013). History of western music 9e ise - international student edition. [Place of publication not identified]: Ww Norton & Co.

Carter, T. (2002). Monteverdi's musical theatre. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Castong, R. (2004). Verisimilitude in Early Venetian Opera: A Historical Perspective and a Study of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Graduate. Hunter College, City University of New York.

Lawrence, F. (2015). Music History Before 1750 - The Baroque Period 1685-1750.

Lawrence, F. (2016). Music in Early Modern Europe - Monteverdi's Late Operas.

Prunieres, H. (1924). Monteverdi’s Venetian Operas. Musical Quarterly, X(2), pp.178-192.

J.M Synge; Elegy and Critique in the Aran Islands & The Travel Essays 3rd May, 2016

The turnaround of the 19th to the 20th century in Ireland was an exciting time for Irish literature through the output of poetry and prose of Irish talent at the time. The Irish literary revival was in full swing- James Joyce was on in the process of producing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the epic, Ulysses, Yeats was in the heat of writing his poetry and would produce Cathleen ni Houlihan, Oscar Wilde had just died, leaving Ireland with some of the great plays of the 19th and 20th Century, and J.M Synge had emerged as a major player on the Irish scene as a pioneer if playwriting, scripting Shadow of the Glen, Riders to the Sea and The Well of the Saints in succession from 1903-1905, before penning Playboy of the Western World in 1907, arguably his most notorious work. It was after production on Well of the Saints had finished, however, that Synge would pen some of his more personal work. 1907 would also mark the publication of the Aran Islands, followed in 1910 by his posthumously published travel essays, amalgamated under the title “In Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara”. In her essay on the Aran Islands and the travel essays, Elaine Sisson says these essays “illustrate how he [Synge] can be understood as an early modernist” (Sisson, np), pointing to the essays being a significant point in how Synge would decide to write, which would be centred around the connection between the past and present, instigated by Synge’s experiences while visiting the Islands and areas around Ireland (Sisson, np). This form of writing gave rise to an anchoring point from where Synge would draw his inspiration to write as he did, which created more of an emotional response from Synge. In this essay, I intend on examining Synge’s Aran Islands and his travel essays, as I investigate his use of elegy and critique as he writes about an Ireland that has perhaps lost its cultural roots to the jaws of urbanisation and industry.

Before carrying on, it is imperative that we define the concept of elegy relative to the task at hand. Merriam Webster defines elegy as “a sad poem or song that expresses sorrow for someone who is dead” ("Elegy"). In the case of Synge’s prose, this carries on as an expression of disappointment, but the “person” in this case, can be interpreted as our Róisín Dubh, Yeats's Cathleen Ní Houlihan, the motherland and her tongue, as Mathews writes “the Irish language is woven into the topography of the landscape with the name of every hillock, inlet and outcrop carrying a local history of meaning” (Sisson, np). It can be said that through Synge’s poetry and prose, we get more than a just a sense of cultural nationalism, but a want to discover more, as the Irish man inside of him sends his nationalistic side through the stunning landscapes of Aran and the Blaskets, ultimately to come to a disappointing conclusion - that this Ireland has long since been forgotten and destroyed by the world he inhabits on the day-to-day basis.

It is worth noting that while the travel essays truly conveyed this sense of an elegiac Synge, it was not the same story whilst he wrote the Aran Island essays, which were written from the perspective of an initially more ignorant Synge (with regards to this adherence to an ‘authentic’ Ireland), and as such I will be focusing more in the critique element of the essay with regards to them, eventually switching focus to a more elegiac Synge when moving onto the Travel Essays.

As stated above, The Aran Islands were initially published in 1907. The essays included were split into three separate strands, each of which correspond with a separate element of the Aran lifestyle; one of the Islanders that Synge has encountered, another detailing the Island’s culture and the third showcasing the quotidienne of the Island’s inhabitants, the latter becoming the base foundation for the inspiration of Shadow of the Glen and Riders to the Sea. The visit to the Islands came as a pushing suggestion from Synge’s fellow playwright and friend, William Butler Yeats. Yeats had told Synge that the Aran Islands held untapped reserves of inspiration, and to “Give up Paris...Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression'” (Trinity Writers, np). It is interesting to note this would lead to a sense of contradistinction between Synge and the native people of the Aran Islands, as Synge takes on the role of a mediator to convey the stories of Aran from the locals to us. The conveyance of this culture to the developed areas of Ireland created a contention within Synge - he was now facing a mental battle with regards to authenticity vs progression, and being a correspondent for the progressive side landed him in a spot of judgement. His trips to the islands had been on a private basis, but his information was being relayed back to the Manchester Guardian, who had contracted him to write on Irish rural life. Regardless, he goes on to write these three essays, beginning with a comparison between lifestyles- the citizens of Aran and his own. At one point, he describes one conversation he had between himself and a young boy, with whom Synge had shared the figure of his wealth with- he becomes silent, and Synge writes that “he is either thinking that I had lied” or that the boy was too “awed by my riches” (Synge, pp 312). It perhaps begins to dawn on Synge at this point that he is in more of a privileged position than what he might be used to admitting, potentially leading to critique of his culture already. This is maybe is turned into a positive, as the divergence in culture is only furthered by the critique of the Islanders as animals, referring first to one local as having the appearance of a spider (Synge, 319) before critiquing the whole Island - “the absence of the heavy boot of Europe has preserved to these people the agile walk of the wild animal” (Synge, pp 324).

This critique is a stark contrast to what would follow later, as Synge is displaying an ignorance of sorts and promoting the culture’s superiority in his writing - he even criticises the Irish language saying it would be easier to understand a crow, that he would “be able to understand the greater part of their cries” (Synge, 332). In spite of all of this, he does praise what native “artistic beauty of medieval life” he uncovers; at one point, he discovers an elderly woman singing a caoineadh, or lullaby, to a young native infant, which he describes as being somewhat incoherent, but writes it “had much musical charm” (Synge, pp 327). It is an event soon after which triggers a sense of fondness within Synge for the Islands- he observes a “primitive” native and her belongings being forcefully removed from her home by “strange armed men who spoke a language she could not understand” (Synge, pp 345). He has an epiphanic moment where he theorised that the homes of families on the Islands “grow into the consciousness of each family” in a manner not experienced by, and a manner that can’t be experienced by, people of his culture, back on the mainland. It is here that we see this sense of an elegiac Synge begin to emerge from within himself, as he begins to offer more respect for the “cool and fresh looking” natives (Synge, pp 346). It is from here that Synge begins to embrace the Island for what it is, noting that the lives of the inhabitants are figurative slaves to their lifestyles, relying on religious events, nature and colloquial myth to base their lifestyles on. Synge details that, in the absence of a clock, the Islanders rely on forgotten methods of timekeeping, “shadows of the doorpost moving across the floor indicates the hour” (Synge, pp 324). Their culture is also heavily based on Irish mythology which, Synge notes, based on what he was told by a friendly Islander, the “Catholic theory of Fairies” while the weather is dictated by a protective witch (Synge, pp 344). Synge, as Ann Saddlemyer puts it, was even affected by the Island’s ‘power’, stating that he was having mood swings between “exaltation and despair” (Saddlemyer, pp 122). What this does indicate, however, is that Synge had undergone a complete transformation during the period of his writing of the Aran Island essays; what had initially come across a potentially sardonic and cynical, critical journalist had become a man encapsulated by the taste of a bucolic, untapped version of Ireland.

The Travel Essays, as stated in the opening paragraph, were written by Synge but only published posthumously in 1910, following his death in 1909. After the publication of the Aran Essays, Synge made it his business to visit Aran each year thereafter for the next 5 years, showing that the impact the island and its culture had on him was far more extensive than what he was conveying through the text (Byrne, np). Sisson comments on the travel essays that “the close association of Synge with the Aran Islands in Galway, through his plays and prose writings, has meant that his emotional and spiritual connection to the Blaskets is often overlooked” (Sisson, np). The travel essays undoubtedly bring out more of a nationalist from within Synge. His journeys through Wicklow and Kerry were the opposite of what you would call conventional- Synge would adopt a ‘tramp’ lifestyle, sleeping in the open air (often in ditches), resting on the ground when he needed to, travelling off road and hiking through bogland and through the Wicklow mountains, in general without a target destination. His goal was to earn the inheritance of being a grounded Irishman, and he would journey in this manner often picking up phrases and mannerisms of the colloquial kind on his way (Sisson, np) Addressing this lifestyle in his essay, The Vagrants of Wicklow, he says “there is a certain wildness that gives it a romance and a peculiar value for those who look at life in Ireland with an eye that is aware of the arts also” (Synge, pp 8).

Linking back to the question at hand, this is a prime example of critique, as is examining Ireland with a critical eye, maybe even challenging us to join him, stating that those who allow themselves to observe this version of Ireland, and have an eye for the arts, will be granted an unseen Ireland. Again going back to Sisson, she notes that the artist in society who embraces the nomadic life of the vagrant will be a symbol of marginality and freedom, but to prepare to be “thrown back on [your] Irish entirely” (Sisson, np) as a result of there being no presence of any spoken english on the Islands.

In The Oppression of the Hills Synge writes about the culture that he discovers outside of any municipality, talking in particular about the treatment he received as a guest to the Blasket Island Hostess, Pegeen Mike, who “took off her apron and fastened it up in the window as a blind” as a kind gesture, then later on seeing the girls of the Island dance while the hostess sat “plucking and drawing a cormorant for the men’s dinner, and calling out to the girls when they lost the step of the dance” (Synge, pp 68). This is a clear elegiac monologue, and even we can see as a modern audience how far removed from what we perceive as reality, even by the standards at the time of Synge. This is a different version of Ireland that Synge is now embracing, and enjoying for that matter, but he is also showcasing to us the blissful ignorance and luxury that are afforded with such a lifestyle. He continues to showcase this as he travels to Kerry, painting lucid word pictures for us as he walks through the countryside (MacKernan, pp 258), “my road ran round an immense valley of magnificent rich turf bog, with mountains all round, and bowls where hidden lakes were lying bitten out of the cliffs” (Synge, pp 27).

A balance elegy and critique can undoubtedly be seen in some of the travel essays, and certainly in A Landlord's Garden in County Wicklow which details how Synge’s thoughts on the fate of the culture that once lived here, as he looks on at a large, crumbling house, probably once belonging to a well off family, but now littered by the surrounding “broken greenhouses”and suffering a loss of valuable information as a result of the “mouse eaten libraries”. The surrounding area, he imagines, was once occupied by “a dozen hearty men” that would have existed on the settlement not only “a generation or two ago”, but those men are gone, their lineage unprotected, and are represented only by “one or two delicate girls” (Synge, pp 37). It is clear that The Travel essays have presented Synge in a different light, perhaps more of a naturist than anything else (albeit without the lack of clothing), but the deep grá that Synge has developed for Ireland here is admirable, and his venture out into the proverbial ‘Irish Wild’ labels his as a cultural innovator, and creates a much more interesting character subject to analysis when examining his prose.

So, getting down to brass tacks, examining the combination of the both critique and elegy is possible within both sets of Synge’s essays, more-so within the Travel Essays as a result of the nature of the initial offering the Aran Island Essays provide. To compare the two, we are presented with two very different perspectives on how he presents both sets of essays. The Aran Island essays take very much a critical approach, wherein he does eventually come around to the idea of embracing the culture, but for the most part he takes on the role of an observer of these “noble savages” that he is writing about. He sees the people of Aran as a different race to him, and describes the Island as wild and alien. It is only when something relatable happens, the eviction of the Islander from her home, that Synge finally makes a connection with the Islanders as it begins to dawn on him that they are of the same ilk. Elegy is something that takes a while to encompass Synge, as it only begins to dawn on him that the Island is an alternate reality to what he is used to, and that the people of the Island have been left unscathed by urbanisation and mass colonisation. The epiphanic moment for Synge, I believe, is when he hears the old woman singing to the child, which triggers a “what if” moment inside in Synge, which has a domino effect on him, leading to his further involvement with Aran and instigating his annual returns, which in itself suggests an air of elegy as he keeps seeking out what he can’t have. Ultimately, he makes the executive decision in his final years to seek out this lifestyle himself, hanging up his entitlement and putting aside his wealth to become truly inspired by what the hidden Ireland has to offer him, which results in a bona fide combination of elegy and critique as he travels the country, sampling hidden iotas of Irish culture and harking back to what a simpler life we would all live if the country embraced its culture more than it does.

Ultimately, the combination of elegy and critique in both the Aran Island essays as well as In Wicklow and West Kerry offers a unique outlook on Synge’s character, and shows that despite how reserved he may have been that he is in fact more malleable and accepting of other cultures. It also offers a glimpse into an Ireland that could have been, given the right circumstances. Most of all however, it showcases just how generic and developed Ireland is, and how far away from her culture her people have drifted. We should be grateful that Synge has documented his experiences, properly giving us an encompassing view of the Ireland of his time- we may never see moments like that in Irish culture again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Elegy". Merriam Webster. Web. 3 May 2016.

MacKernan, Caitríona. "Synge's Song". Books Ireland 2008: 257-258. Print.

Mathews, P.J. "The Drama Of Cultural Shift In Synge, Friel And Mcpherson". Journal of Irish Studies 29 (2014): 22-31. Web. 3 May 2016.

Mathews, P.J.. "Re-thinking Synge". The Cambridge Companion To J. M. Synge Cambridge. P.J. Mathews. 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. p.3-14. Web. 3 May 2016.

"Review - Nicholas Grene (Ed.), J. M. Synge - Travelling Ireland: Essays 1898-1908". Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 62 (2010): 221-223. Web. 3 May 2016.

Roche, Anthony. ‘J.M. Synge: Journeys Real and Imagined.’ Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 16. (2001). 78-96. Print.

Saddlemyer, Ann. ‘Synge’s “The Aran Islands” 1907.’ New Hibernia Review/Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 11, Issue 4 (Winter, 2007). 120-123. Print.

Sisson, Elaine. "The Aran Islands And The Travel Essays". The Cambridge Companion To J. M. Synge Cambridge. P.J. Mathews. 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. p.52-63. Web. 3 May 2016.

Synge, J. M. In Wicklow And West Kerry. Online: BoD - Books on Demand, 2011. Web. 3 May 2016.

"Synge: The Aran Islands". Askaboutireland.ie. N.p., 2016. Web. 3 May 2016.

Synge, J.M. ‘The Aran Islands.’ The Complete Works of JM Synge. Ed. Aidan Arrowsmith. Hertfordshire; Wordsworth Editions. 2008. Print.

Trinity Writers, Trinity College Dublin. "J.M. Synge - Trinity Writers : Trinity College Dublin". Tcd.ie. N.p., 2016. Web. 3 May 2016.

Effective Types of Humour in Contemporary Irish Fiction 3rd May, 2016

Humour is a tool that is used quite broadly across Irish fiction. The specifically dry brand of humour that we call, aptly, Irish humour, is used more so in contemporary Irish writing and may be characterised as being immediately cynical, satirical and oftentimes scatological. In many ways, this brand of humour can be used as a vehicle for carrying thematic arches, forwarding serious plot points in a manner which might seem unconventional (when compared with the standard novel or short story), but it is imperative to understand that this is what sets apart Irish humour from its counterparts. In the works of recent Irish authors, humour has been used as the structural support for a novel’s DNA, with the thematic undercurrents filling in the proverbial strands in between these structures. Before 2005, the world was graced with the delightfully dark and comedic novels of Roddy Doyle, most notably The Snapper and The Commitments of the Barrytown Trilogy, which introduced the world to this particular form of an almost deprecating comedy. This trend has carried over to fiction post 2005, where we now have authors such as Kevin Barry and Colm Toibín who are consistently producing works under this unique banner of Irish literature, utilising this brand of humour in their literary toolbox to convey what might be considered a middlebrow novel that has been polymerized with highbrow issues, as comedic purpose is served through a tide of undercutting thematic angles, to the point where the conclusion of a novel or short story may leave a lasting comedic impression, but also a lasting message relative to the overarching plot (see Wifey Redux). In this essay, I will investigate this sense of Irish humour and it’s effect, referring to contemporary Irish authors Kevin Barry and Anne Enright, and how they utilise humour as a tool to drive the ultimate message of their work to the reader, particularly in their works Dark Lies the Island and The Green Road.

As stated above, when we discuss Irish humour, it is a broader discussion than most due to the sheer breadth of the subject area; it is important that each different form of humour is defined and appropriately associated with the relevant author in order to develop a stronger analysis of the effect of how humour is used in the works of each selected author. Satire is something that is quite prevalent in Irish prose, both in literature and in daily consumable media. The concept of satire follows the core idea of critical mockery, which will often corral different elements such as parody, irony and sarcasm in its execution (Grimsley). For the most part, satire is something that is often used for entertainment purposes, and is a well known tool in Irish critical/satirical outlets such as The Emergency, The UCD Cardinal and Waterford Whispers News, but it can also be used to highlight a particular detail or subject to cause certain epiphanic moments among its consumers (Grimsley names The Hunger Games as a prime example with regards to this use) (Grimsley, np). In Irish literature, Satire (or more explicitly, Horatian satire, which is primarily comically focused) has been a mainstay of prose going back as far as Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, where the word ‘Earnest’ is satirised throughout the entire play (Grimsley, np). Another type of humour present in Irish fiction is cynicism, which is more of a naturally occurring element within Irish writing as opposed to being intentionally used. Cynicism follows the notion that people are almost deprecative in their responses, creating a sense of doubtfulness, contempt and derisiveness. Speaking on Irish cynics, columnist Karla Rodriguez has said that Irish people “don’t know that it’s cynicism” and that “there’s this Irish expectation that nothing good lasts” (Rodriguez, np). Another columnist, Aideen Kerr, says that Irish cynicism is naturally occurring, and that “many of us find comfort in the fact that we can blame Catholicism and the English for this particularly Irish trait” (Kerr). Finally, scatological humour is traditionally used almost as a cheap way of creating a sense of humour within prose, but in terms of Irish humour it is almost used for a contrary effect, as the relatability of the Irish ‘potty mouth’ is something of a parody of its own form, especially when it comes to the placement of the accent designated to the narrator. Two notable instances of this would be the Father Jack character, portrayed by the late Frank Kelly, in the popular Channel 4 series Father Ted (Father Ted), and, as mentioned above, the works of Roddy Doyle. The use of the Irish scatological sayings ‘Feck’, ‘Arse’ etc. highlight the prevalence of this sense of humour in Irish fiction, which is subject to quite a substantial amount of Irish consumption (Kearney, np). Now, having defined these popular forms of humour employed by Irish authors, I will highlight their use in two Irish texts included in the short story collections listed above, as well as examine their effect on the stories they are employed in.

One such author who has used satire in his writing is Kevin Barry, who uses this satire in a manner that would not only have satire present for comedic purposes, but also as a vehicle to covertly convey a message to the reader. In his article ‘In Search of Irish Satirists’, columnist Shane Breslin says, on the presence of Irish authors who make use of such humour, that Kevin Barry “readily springs to mind”, specifically stating that his collection of short stories, ‘Dark Lies the Island’, was a publication that “fitted the pigeon-hole of satire more than anything else” (Breslin). Getting into the collection of short stories itself, one such piece of prose contained within the set, and that typifies this brand of satire, is Wifey Redux. A relatively domestic and, for some readers, highly relatable short story, Wifey Redux is, as Barry puts it, “very much a satirical take on a Celtic Tiger, prosperous South Dublin family and all of that coming undone” (Miller, np). The short story, which follows the first person perspective of the main character, Jonathan Prendergast, showcases his struggle as he copes with his infrigidate relationship with his wife and his daughter’s disaffective personality, all the while becoming mentally overburdened (and willingly so) with fending off his daughter’s boyfriend - for fear of him being too much like his younger self. Relating back to the question at hand, this is a perfect example of Irish fiction showcasing its sense of humour; Barry has created this ironic and parody-like representation of an Irish nuclear family, as well as capturing, as Brown puts it, the “wry self-knowing bloke-ishness” of the middle aged, middle class Irish man (Brown, np). Moments that convey this can be seen in the text at various points: From the get go, we’re given this set of nicknames for Jonathan and his wife, Saoirse - “She called me “Hubby” and I called her “Wifey” - which Barry says, through the narrative of the story, is “ironical play” of their seemingly “perfect marriage” (Barry). This use of name calling continues through the play and, while seemingly harmless at first, it ironically becomes a point of what the story describes as a “dry up note at the end of a sentence”/”sarcastic stress”, creating disparaging repartee which we, as readers, find relatable and subsequently comical. We are also given the description of Jonathan’s daughter, Ellie (who is a clear parody of an a modern teenager, wearing “half nothing”/”Hot pants, ripped tights, belly tops, and she has piercings all over”), whom he says resembles his own wife while in her youth, commenting that she, as well as every man’s daughter, is supposedly a “perfect facsimile” of their wives “back then, when they were young. And slim. And sober” (Barry, np). There is, as the story quite aptly points out, “a horrid poignancy to it” - it is as if Barry is suggesting all daughters are, ironically, destined to become a parody of their former selves, while simultaneously reproducing themselves, only to see their downfall a second time, all the while onlooking carelessly while downing bottles of Pinot Grigio.

Certainly not least of all, we see Jonathan consumed by the thoughts of the Abercrombie-and-Fitch laden Aodhan (looking like “he’d been raised on prime beef and full-fat milk” [Barry] - a clear parody of a southside Dublin teenage boy) attempting similar acts of a sexual nature that he himself had with Saoirse whilst at the same age bracket, despite being “brought up catholic” and feeling “sinful, almost” (because it wouldn’t be an Irish satire without showing how ‘devoted’ to catholicism we are ) (Barry, np). There is a clear sense of irony that Barry has created, as Jonathan’s paternal instinct is at a height at the thoughts of “Ellie P the Blo-Job Queen” (Barry, np) becoming a mainstay amongst Ellie’s peers. It has become Barry’s signature to write satirically in order to convey his point. On writing his stories, Barry himself has said “my kind of ideal experience for the reader, if you like, is to laugh all the way through the story and then at the end go ‘what in the name of hell were we laughing at there?’, you know, that’s what I want the reader to feel” ("Irish Writers In America"). This is true in Wifey Redux also, as his humour aids in the exposure of the underlying themes of depression and mental health, as I have alluded to in a previous paper (Poole, np). Apart from the blatant comedic intent that the story is attempting convey, there is a sense of nefariousness that is almost subtle, but eventually surfaces in spite of Jonathan’s lack of conveyed detail with regards to any sort of harsh tribulation. An accumulation of subtle short details, fed through the blanket of satirical overtones, leads to the surfacing of notions that there might be something more serious at play between the narrator and his wife. Barry hints at alcoholism, psychological stress and depression which are being managed and treated by the never-present Dr Murtagh, mentioned at 3 key moments through the story (after describing Ellie and relating her looks to Saoirse, when Jonathan suspects there is sexual activity going on between Ellie and Aodhan and loses control of his temper, and when Jonathan confronts Aodhan in a violent manner) that highlight issues and inconsistencies with what might be considered your generic narrator in such a story. It is suggested that the Jonathan is struggling to cope with a somewhat abate marriage, and now that his teenage daughter is loose with a burgeoning sense of independence, he has become somewhat unhealthily obsessed with chasing off Aodhan, edging his family life to the sideline and damaging his sense of rationality in the process. This certainly isn’t aided by the hinted substance abuse and alcoholism. Barry has left it up to us to decide the ambiguous future of his mental health and judgement of character at the hands of his own masculinity, which is the most effective iota of this format and which provides us with a clear indication that the story has trans morphed from a lighthearted comedy into something much more in depth and thematic.

Barry is more of a pioneer of using humour as a literary vehicle, and this is a result of his consistent use of the comedy genre in his writing, which conveys his unique brand of story writing across to the reader. But outside of this form, just how much of a sense of humour is conveyed through Irish storytelling? To examine a more subtle approach to expressing humour through Irish fiction, presented as a lesser literary vehicle and acting only as a supporting element to storytelling, we will examine the use of humour, specifically incidental scatological humour, in Man Booker Prize winning author Anne Enright’s novel, The Green Road. The Green Road is a unique novel in its own right. Spanning a broad time frame and area, 30 years across 3 separate continents, the novel is disjointed. Told in two parts, the story follows the story of Rosaleen Madigan as she corrals her four children back home to discuss the sale of the house they grew up in. A far cry from the realm of Wifey Redux, The Green Road presents itself as a bona fide novel, but shares the core idea that the central plot is centred around a somewhat dysfunctional family, manifested in the way the Madigan siblings fought, creating what Chloe Hughes says is “one of those special kinds of Irish crazy though I'm sure there's families like that everywhere" (Hughes, np). With a novel with such a background, it goes without saying that humour must be present to outweigh moments of dramatic significance. Irish Times columnist, Belinda McKeon, says on the comedic elements of the novel that “everywhere in this novel there are phrases and moments of that altitude, of that fineness, often sharply funny - “she got a slightly sarcastic feel off the ditches” is one of several lines I will quote to myself for the rest of my life” (McKeon). Enright uses humour almost in a contrary manner to the way to Barry does. Where Barry will focus on conveying a more dramatic point across a moving wave of humour, Enright will attempt to throw a proverbial ice bucket of humour over a heated or serious situation to lighten the mood. One of the earliest best of this is near the centre of the novel, where Ibrahim is suffering as a result of his contraction of Malaria. What is a (seemingly) a very serious situation, where Ibrahim is found “shaking under six blankets, the sweat pouring out of him and ‘everybody in the room’” (Enright, np), is soon given a scatological and cynical injection of humour; “like the time she had to crap out in the bush and everyone fell around the place because she got someone else’s shit on her foot” (Enright). This trend continues at various points throughout the novel, such as when Carol and Emmet are discussing their veterinary duties at the Radisson bar (“Unless it has insurance, in which case, it’s a three-man job under full anaesthetic.’ She pushed her fingertips up under her own eye to demonstrate, and then under his, saying, ‘Hey, he has urethritis, you get to do this to his dick”), and when Alice and Emmett terminate sexual intercourse over her dismissal of his dog (“sex was off, that much was clear. Love me, love my dog”) (Enright, np). The inclusion of this humour is, as stated above, not explicitly to convey a sense of humour, but to provide comedy relief over moments of dramatic tension. Such a style is comparable to that seen in Frank McCourt’s memoir Angela’s Ashes, which uses well placed points of scatological and cynical humour to relieve tension (Zimmerman). To refer back to the question at hand, this shows that even a more serious novel with such a dramatic sense of end-weightedness as The Green Road, there is no lack of a sense of humour, and the purpose of this humour is justified in more of a simpler fashion here, almost following convention.

Comparing the two very different selected texts above, it is clear that there is a sense of humour present in contemporary Irish fiction. What’s impressive to note is the purpose that humour serves as a literary device across both texts; in what might seem like an improbable feat, Kevin Barry has managed to condense such an impactful and thought provoking package in the form of Wifey Redux, which is fuelled by humour as its dominant constituent. On the converse, The Green Road is a novel which, while having a sense of humour, uses it to suppress the conveyance of intense bursts of emotion, which often leads to mixed signals to us as readers when it comes to understanding what it is Enright is trying to say, thematically speaking. But, ultimately, to answer the question at hand; Does contemporary Irish fiction have a sense of humour? Yes. Of what type and to what effect? Many, most of which revolve around satirical, cynical and scatological overtones, which are used perhaps conventionally to provide comedy relief, but in some case to completely turn the direction of the story, complete with it’s theme and lasting message, in one that is entirely different to what you might have originally thought.

Bibliography

Barry, Kevin. Dark Lies The Island. Amazon: Graywolf Press, 2013. Web. 1 May 2016.

Barry, Kevin. Kevin Barry Interview. 2012. TV.

Breslin, Shane. "In Search Of Irish Satirists". Irish Writing Blog. N.p., 2013. Web. 1 May 2016.

Brisard, Melanie. "On The Opening And Closing Of « Dark Lies The Island »". Blackboard Discussion (2016): n. pag. Web. 1 May 2016.

Brown, Cathy. "No 637 - Dark Lies The Island By Kevin Barry". 746 Books. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.

Enright, Anne. The Green Road. Online ed. Russia: Rulit.me, 2015. Web. 3 May 2016.

Father Ted. Ireland: Channel 4, 1996. DVD.

Grimsley, Shawn. "Satire In Literature: Definition, Types & Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.Com". Study.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 1 May 2016.

Hughes, Chloe. Anne Enright - The Green Road. Dublin: Blackboard, 2016. Web. 3 May 2016. Irish Fiction Since 2005 - Blackboard Discussion.

"Irish Writers In America". YouTube, 2015. NY University broadcast.

Jones, Thomas. "The Empty Family By Colm Toibín". The Guardian 2010. Web. 1 May 2016.

Kearney, Liz. "What Makes Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy So Enduring? - Independent.Ie". Independent.ie. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 May 2016.

Keegan, Claire. "Foster - The New Yorker". The New Yorker. N.p., 2010. Web. 1 May 2016.

Kerr, Aideen. "Top Ten Stereotypes About The Irish That Are True". Indublin.ie. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.

McKeon, Belinda. "The Green Road By Anne Enright Review: So Irish It’S Almost Provocative". The Irish Times. N.p., 2015. Web. 3 May 2016.

Miller, Jeff. "AN INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN BARRY THE AUTHOR OF CITY OF BOHANE TALKS IRELAND, MONTREAL AND TERRAIN VAGUE". Maisonneuve 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.

Poole, Aaron. "On Kevin Barry's "Wifey Redux"". Academia.edu. N.p., 2016. Web. 1 May 2016.

Power, Chris. "Dark Lies The Island By Kevin Barry - Review". The Guardian 2012. Web. 1 May 2016.

Rodriguez, Karla. "Brendan Gleeson Talks About Irish Cynicism In ‘The Guard’". IrishCentral.com. N.p., 2011. Web. 1 May 2016.

"Satire Versus Cynicism". Phillystine.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.

Tóibín, Colm. The Empty Family. New York: Scribner, 2011. Print.

Zimmerman, Greg. "The New Dork Review Of Books: Angela's Ashes: Funniest Sad Book Ever". Thenewdorkreviewofbooks.com. N.p., 2009. Web. 3 May 2016

Middlebrow Pop-Fiction in 20th Century Britain 3rd May, 2016

Over the course of the period 1900-1960, the growth of popular fiction in Britain was something of an unprecedented phenomenon. Genres began to broaden, serialised fiction was at a fulcrum of popularity and imaginative plots weren’t lacking. Many of the works we read today take direct inspiration from the fiction that followed the first half of the 20th Century, which might seem improbable given the sheer volume of different varieties of novels that we can choose from today, but the variety of material available to the consumer at the time was incredible, given the the contextual circumstances; regardless of an individual’s class and literary appetite, fiction of all sorts were available for consumption. The course that has just concluded is a testament to this, as the variety of genre and style of prose studied throughout were never one in the same. When it came to certain novels, however, the term “middlebrow” was used as a descriptor, a term which upon being educated to it’s meaning offered an anchor to the fiction included on the course. In this essay, I intend on highlighting just exactly what it is I have come to understand with regards to “middle-brow” culture, and how it has helped in understanding the fiction included in this course.

To convey my own understanding on middlebrow, I must first attempt to define it and it’s relative counterparts. So what is the middlebrow? Where do ideas like high, middle and low brow even come from? Over the course of the 19th century, there was a revival of sorts with regards to a pseudo science entitled phrenology. The concept of phrenology revolves around the brain being the organ of the mind as a main structure, but that different parts of the brain house different characteristics, i.e. there are parts of the brain that control consciousness, hope etc, and practitioners of phrenology believed that if you studied the skull you’d be able to tell someone’s characteristics as well as measure their level of intelligence (Purcell, np).

There would have been a lot made of this in the 19th century, but modern sciences have disproved such theories (Purcell, np), but even so, the term was still carried forward in a lot of interesting ways, not least of all into its translation to contemporary culture. The obvious example that comes to mind is the infamous cross section of the fictional character Homer Simpson (subject I), the mind of whom is compartmentalised into different controlled modules. But phrenology and its use in determining people’s characteristics and intelligence isn’t only subject to comical purposes.

(Fox)

The term would eventually translate to become an identifier of class and social hierarchy. The illustrated difference between high and low brow subjects was a clear in identifying this; the high-brow displaying a high, straight forehead, is synonymous with the upper class man, while the low brow subject is depicted as a man of coloured skin and characteristics. The racial and class politics that come with the later concept of phrenology can be said to have promoted a sense of white supremacy (Damon-Bach and Clements, 131).

While phrenology is a concept that does not exist in this instance, at least in the way it has been previously defined, we have still carried forward the idea of low, middle and high brow when it comes to culture. An illustration from a 1949 issue of Life magazine (subject II) illustrates exaggerated, hyperbolic “browed” subjects (high brows have literal, comically caricatured high brows while low brows are subject to a conversely similar treatment) next to a table of the type of clothing they would typically wear, the kind of entertainments they would indulge in, even the food they would consume (Ballou, np).

(Ballou)

So how do we think of “brows” today? What do people in these categories consume now? Devon Friedman writes in an article for, of all places, GQ magazine, where he illustrates a Venn diagram (subject III) showing us what he suggests contemporary “browed” subjects either possess or consume.

(Friedman)

We can see that the contemporary high-brow subject indulges in things like books, Brahms, Alec Baldwin, Zach Galifianakis in “Between Two Ferns”, but not in the Hangover Part II, which is decidedly middlebrow, along with watching BBC programming, Shakespeare etc. Meanwhile low-brow, according to the infographic, sees people belonging to that category indulge in more menial and arguably less favourable items, such as fast food, alcohol and reality T.V. What this infographic is telling us, if it is not blatantly obvious, is that we carry forward these brow distinctions because when we are talking about them we are talking about taste- these categories are how we assign people their taste, or more so police their taste.

Based on this notion, understanding of the term “middlebrow” should be quite a simple task; the middlebrow category is labelled as such as it is a label of taste, and contains within it certain prose that will be suited to the people under that label. But in understanding the fiction on this course, can the term itself be helpful tool at all? Perhaps; Middlebrow, as a taste, based from the research carried out above, suggests that it focuses on works that are not difficult to read, yet that might challenge them. In terms of the reading list on the actual course, however, the genres contained below don’t make any easy job of identifying middlebrow texts.

John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915). The thriller/spy story. E.M. Hull, The Sheik (1919). Exotic romance on page and screen. M.R. James and others. Short supernatural fiction. Dorothy Sayers, The Nine Tailors (1934) Detective fiction. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm (1932). Parodies of popular forms. P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho Jeeves (1934). Comic fiction. Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943). The literary thriller. Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (1952). Post-war trends.

Virginia Woolf once wrote (but never mailed) quite a scathing letter to the New Statesmen where she identified a high-brow subject as “a man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind in a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea”, and exclaims over her own pride of being a high-brow herself before listing several persons who are in her high-brow cohort, including Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, and then says that “no person of any sense will deny that this passionate preoccupation of theirs, riding across country in pursuit of ideas, often leads to disaster” (Woolf and Woolf, np). She goes on to talk about their various failures and their untimely and unseemly deaths. Her point is that the high-brow subjects are living for art- it’s not very practical and it’s not necessarily a way to survive, but there’s value in it as she says “high-brows, for some reason or another, are wholly incapable of dealing successfully with what is called ‘real-life’” (Woolf and Woolf, np). Based on this notion, we can begin to determine that Woolf made it clear that she, along with other people who self-identify as high-brow, relied on low-brow subjects, and she identified low-brow subjects as being “a man or a woman of thoroughbred vitality who rides his body in pursuit of living a gallop across life”.

Essentially, Woolf is talking in her letter about how high and low brows need one another, almost as if the high-brows are there to sit and watch and see the lives that the low-brow people are living and then reflect it back to them, often through art as low-brow individuals can’t see that kind of artful life for themselves- they’re too busy actually living it and doing the work that real-life takes.

She goes on further to dismantle the notion that low and high-brows are at a point of conflict, a notion that is apparently purported by the yet-to-be-mentioned middlebrow class. She makes no effort to disguise her disdain for the middlebrow subject, calling them;

“the go-betweens, the busy bodies who run from one to the other with their tittle-tattle and make all the mischief. They are neither one thing nor the other, they are not high-brows whose brows are high or low-brows whose brows are low. Their brows are betwixt and between. The middlebrow is the man or a woman of middle-bred intelligence who ambles and saunters now on this side of the hedge, now on that, in pursuit of no single object, neither art itself or life itself, but both mixed indistinguishably and rather nastily, with money, fame, power or prestige. The middlebrow curries favour with both sides equally.”

(Woolf, np)

Based on the above analysis, as well as the prior notion that HIgh and Low brows aren’t good at managing “real-life”, it can be said then that the middlebrow novels are on the reading list are not of an immediately comedic nature, or even supernatural, leaving out the likes of Cold Comforts farm (containing less than serious elements of storytelling, e.g. “A straight nose is a great help if one wishes to look serious”) and Right Ho Jeeves (featuring somewhat scatological humour, e.g,“Jeeves, I'm engaged.I hope you will be very happy, sir. Don't be an ass. I'm engaged to Miss Bassett.”) from the middlebrow label, as their storylines are too comedic and exaggerated to have been eligible for inclusion. This leaves the only candidates for the middlebrow label, based on Woolf’s logic, to be the crime fictions and spy drama, and anything in between that might actually be possible in real life, while the others designated as low brow fiction.

John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915). The thriller/spy story. Low Brow E.M. Hull, The Sheik (1919). Exotic romance on page and screen. M.R. James and others. Short supernatural fiction. Dorothy Sayers, The Nine Tailors (1934) Detective fiction. Middle Brow Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm (1932). Parodies of popular forms. P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho Jeeves (1934). Comic fiction. Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943). The literary thriller. High Brow Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (1952). Post-war trends.

Woolf positions middlebrow individuals in an almost liminal space where they’re mixing in a manner that she is conveying as uncomfortable, also critiquing this place as non-productive. They go back and forward between aspiring to be like the high-brows, to consume and think like they do, while simultaneously trying to instruct the low-brow and try to be a cultural gatekeeper of sorts. She says that;

“when the middlebrow have earned enough to live on, they go on earning enough to buy one of the things that middle-brows always buy, Queen Anne furniture, faked but nonetheless expensive, first editions of dead writers, always the worst, pictures or reproductions of pictures by dead painters, houses in what is called the Georgian style, but never anything new, never a picture by a living painter or a chair by a living carpenter or books by living writers, for to buy living art requires living taste, and has that kind of art and that kind of taste or what middle-brows call high-brow, poor middle-brow spends vast sums on sham antiques.” (Woolf, np)

So as if that weren't enough, she then likens the middle-brow subject to a fungus;

“middlebrow seems to me to be everywhere. “What’s that?” I cry. “Middlebrow on the cabbages? Middlebrow infecting that poor old sheep? And what about the moon?” I look up and, behold, the moon is under eclipse. “Middlebrow at it again!” I exclaim. “Middlebrow obscuring, dulling, tarnishing and coarsening even the silver edge of Heaven’s own scythe.” (Woolf, np)

It is clear that Woolf is condemning the middle-brow as being a blight on culture, aspiring to but never reaching high-brow status but then taking on the educator role for the low-brow. It’s because the middlebrow don’t have the inherent taste that the high-brow subjects do, and one might argue that also wouldn’t have their class or their education. There are parts in this letter where Woolf discusses in detail certain neighbourhoods where she and her high-brow cohorts live and also where the middlebrow people live, where there is a heavy sense of class anxiety present in her descriptions.

This alludes to a clearer picture with regards to the tastes of different brows. Are we to assume from this that the likes of Cold Comforts Farm and Right Ho Jeeves are reserved for the low brow, whilst high brow subjects are supposed to read the likes of academic journals, Historical fiction, broadsheet newspapers, and biographies? Whilst the in between are assigned to the middlebrow?

John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915). The thriller/spy story. Low Brow E.M. Hull, The Sheik (1919). Exotic romance on page and screen. M.R. James and others. Short supernatural fiction. Dorothy Sayers, The Nine Tailors (1934) Detective fiction. Middle Brow Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm (1932). Parodies of popular forms. P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho Jeeves (1934). Comic fiction. Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943). The literary thriller. High Brow Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (1952). Post-war trends.

Referring back to the article by Friedman, he writes that “loving the middlebrow is an unforgivable crime against taste, because you know who likes the middlebrow? The unacceptable. Boring people. The easily manipulated.” He then writes, “people tend to hate the middlebrow because of it’s embarrassingly earnest desire to be liked, such as trends in 20th century Britain. It’s scientific and successful approach to hitting people’s ‘pleasure buttons’, it points out the obvious fact, that you’re not as much an individual as you’d like to think.” So there is still, to this day, a negative connotation surrounding the middlebrow to some, especially when it’s connected more to the consumer rather than to the work of art being consumed. But with literature even today we can see the middlebrow working on all sorts of levels, but we’re programmed to accept them, and this can present itself as bookstore layouts, in marketing, reading institutions etc. This acceptance has made is possible for middlebrow texts to continue to circulate within the market, to the point where they were on this course, solidifying the middlebrow novel as a mainstay in the modern world (Friedson, np).

One middlebrow design which has often been labelled is the ‘book of the month’ club which is a kind of subscription service, getting a new book every month that are chosen for you by a panel or team of middle-brow enforcers. Even those run on a self sufficient basis may be considered middle-brow, as very often what arises from conversations had at such events will result in affective responses, says Purcell, “stimulating relatability with characters and their experiences, which of course there is room for, but the middlebrow way of reading wouldn’t go far beyond that, personally.” This would further support the point above, that the middlebrow individual are destined to read all realistic fiction in between that which is either too unrealistic or too factual. But not everybody sees middlebrow as being a negative thing. Macy Halford writes in the New Yorker that she sees the middlebrow as “an important part of how ideas are circulated in our culture among different strata of society (specifically, among groups with varying levels of wealth, education, and access to “high” or “avant-garde” culture).” She even positions papers such as the New Yorker as being middle-brow publications, saying that they have are;

“devoted to the high but also to making it accessible to many; to bringing ideas that might remain trapped in ivory towers and academic books, or in high-art (or film or theatre) scenes, into the pages of a relatively inexpensive periodical that can be bought at bookstores and newsstands across the country (and now on the Internet).” (Halford, np)

Also there is Janice Radway, who wrote an excellent book on middlebrow reading culture and the ‘book of the month club’ phenomenon entitled A Feeling for Books, which argues that middle-brow isn’t just taking the high-brow, co-opting it and shaving it down into something less impressive for consumption among middle-brow audiences, but that it’s actually resisting the avant-garde or academic ways of reading that can be very privileged. For example, with regards to the ‘book of the month club’, their mandate was that they valued literary excellence, but also that they wanted the experience of a ‘feel-good’ book or the pleasure and enjoyment of reading (Radway, np).

With that in mind, one wonders as to whether Woolf was right in her labelling- sure, the low brow market exists, but would the low brow, given my investigation, be able to read the likes of Cold Comforts farm, comfortably? Perhaps it should be the case where serialised fiction and short stories are reserved for the low brow, providing short bursts of entertainments that are manageable to those with a lesser taste than those hungry for more. Perhaps it is more appropriate that I come to my own conclusion here with regards to the fiction of the course- I understand that the middlebrow is simply a common band that corrals many people who consume standard, non-complicated fiction, and I have come to understand that the fiction on this course has been diverse as a result, as when compared with each other, Buchan's the 39 steps and Fleming’s James Bond seem the most realistic on the reading list, and even they’re pushing the boundaries of what one might consider realistic. Maybe wolf was wrong- the Middlebrow shouldn’t be lambasted, as most of us are part of that band.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ballou, Elizabeth. "1949 'LIFE' Magazine Declares What's Highbrow And What's Lowbrow". Bustle.com. N.p., 2014. Web. 1 May 2016.

Damon-Bach, Lucinda L and Victoria Clements. Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003. Print.

Fox,. Homer Simpson Brain Head Cerebellum Diagram. Web. 1 May 2016.

Friedman, Devon. "Middlebrow: The Taste That Dare Not Speak Its Name". GQ. N.p., 2011. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

Halford, Macy. "On "Middlebrow"". The New Yorker 2011. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

Oman, Kelly. "Ordering Chaos In The Novels Of P.G. Wodehouse". Undergraduate. Washington University in St. Louis, 2014. Print.

Purcell, Jason. "On "Middlebrow" | Intro". Discussion. N.p., 2015. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

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Exploring a Retarding Musical Culture, Censorship Nationalism, and Musical Hegemony: A Dissertation Investigating the Negative Impact of Irish Independence on Music in Ireland 19th May, 2016 Foreword

The narrative of how Ireland was transformed in the early months of 1916 is something subject to many variations, but the general consensus among academics follows a narrative that most consider to be correct; the failure of a tolling rebellion, organised to regain an independent Ireland, resulted in the the execution of the rebellion’s leaders. The eventual fallout of the events of Easter week would cause a domino effect leading right up to 1921 and beyond, marking what Maria McHale calls a “sea of change in attitudes, characterised by a more strident nationalism that had been burgeoning in various cultural organisations since the turn of the century” (McHale, 2016, p.i).

Suggesting that the results of the 1916 rising would create a more militant strand of nationalism in the years following the event is only logical, which in turn would suggest a shifting change in cultural expression. Therefore, the cultural elements present in the Irish domain in the decades following the insurgency should have been rich in relevant material expressed through art forms. It is true, particularly in the realm of nationalistically fuelled song and music, that the surrounding months of the rising were responsible for the creation of works which all contained a common grounded nationalist theme, featuring works by ICA secretary Constance Markievicz and singer-turned-volunteer Gerard Crofts which showcased the speed at which the nationalist movement was adopted by the Irish people (McHale, 2016, p.i). But, going forward to examine the lasting effects of the Rising on music culture, was this still the case? Indeed, the 1916 Rising might have been a tragedy, but in terms of cultural inspiration, it should have provided an immense amount of material that may have been subject to inspirational draw for decades following the insurrection. But the way that cultural expression took its place following the newly formed state, particularly in relation to music, was very different to what one might have predicted.

As the newly formed Irish government began to root itself in the happenings of the country, a problematic relationship began to form in terms of musical expression within the country and the government that ran it; The composition and showcasing of music in Ireland were subject to a certain ignorance by the state body, as the promotion of a progressive musical culture in Ireland was left by the wayside in favour of other aspects of Irish life. Not forgotten in terms of regulation, however, musical activity would become subject to state taxation via the retailing of musical instruments within the country, ensuring that in terms of both outer and inter-country advancement, the country was subject to retardation of musical culture in what some might call state censorship.

On top of this, the presence of a single governmental body running the country attracted the attention of the Catholic Church and the Gaelic League, who saw the government's position of authority as a means of spreading their ideals to the Irish public, particularly through music as a medium

In terms of actual censorship, when it came to the commemoration of the political history responsible for the Free State’s existence, the inspirational draw previously mentioned was not something subject to much uptake, with many composers neglecting to compose new works of commemorative music in an apparent avoidance of nationalism. This was echoed in the jubilee commemorations of the rising when, with the power to promote the country’s struggle through the arts, the government decided instead to suppress anything relating to the rebellious nature of Irish people prior to its formation.

In this thesis, I intend to explore the establishment of the nation state of Ireland and its negative impact on the musical future which followed it, taking the above instances as headings to investigate how music suffered as a result of retarding musical culture at the hands of the government, nationalistic censorship in relation to commemorating the 1916 rising, and a prevailing sense of musical hegemony established by the invasive presence of the Catholic church and the Gaelic League in forming government policy.

I - Music Cultural Retardation Under The Emerging Nation State

i) - Music as a Lesser Priority

In her essay on music education emerging in the newly governed Ireland, Marie McCarthy states “It is a well established fact that between the founding of the Irish nation state and the 1940's, Irish governments were committed to transmitting a narrow, essentialist definition of Irish identity“ (McCarthy, 1998, p.66). With such an general, assumptive statement in mind, to think that cultural development was at the forefront of the Cumann na nGaedheal government is only a natural reaction. It is true that one of the first tasks undertaken by the state was the planned revival of an Irish festival, Aonach Tailteann, that had not been performed since the before 18th Century (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.14), but in terms of how the events ultimately transpired, it is clear that the project was not a priority. Having been organised for a 1921 date, the event was ultimately postponed, as money would apparently be “better spent on alleviating unemployment, poverty and terrible want” elsewhere across the country (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.10).

Similarly, In Dublin, radio broadcasting service 2RN (a precursor to Radio Éireann), had started broadcasting in January 1926, providing only three hours of programmes nightly. On Easter Monday 1926, the radio listings in the daily newspapers referred to the concluding item for the night’s programmes as a performance of the ‘Station Orchestra’, an overstating name attached to the relatively small ensemble, five strings plus piano, which had been created by the station several weeks previously (Kehoe, 2016, p.2). In contrast, on the same day, the focus of many outlets was on the construction of a new hydroelectric plant at Ardnacrusha Dam, sponsored by the state, taking up quite a substantial section in an issue of the Limerick Leader issued that day;

‘The countryside is undergoing a complete transformation. A light railway has been constructed. Huts are springing up as if at the touch of a magic wand. Telephone poles are erected, the brown soil is deeply turned up where lately there was verdant pasture, and huge machines of the most complex nature are scattered around. O’Brien’s Bridge now resembles a great fortress, with all the impedimenta of war lying about. The hosts of workmen, too, remind one a little of an attacking army, warring against the elements, changing the course of nature, and diverting our finest river to meet the demands of man.’ (Kehoe, 2016, p.1)

These instances act as quite the converse to McCarthy’s statement. Drawing things back to music, there is evidence that, among all cultural mediums, music was being left out in more-so a manner than others. The improvement of Ireland’s musical culture in general, according to McCarthy, was not a concern of the government until the late 1940’s, culminating in the establishment of the Arts Council in 1951 (McCarthy, 1998, p.66).

This is echoed in the sentiments of Dr. John Larchet, professor of music at UCD between 1921 and 1958 (Frances Clarke, 2013, p.579), who, as Anne Mullaney-Dignam says, would pen two letters to the Ministry of Finance showcasing “the present position of music in Ireland, and the needs of the future”, dictating to the government that there was “a signal lack of musical culture in Ireland” and it was “the duty of the state to come forward” to encourage the creation of musical bodies (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.12). It is interesting then that when it came to the dispersal of music in the country, relating back to the transmission of Radio 2RN, that there was such a lack of programming, as well as a lack of investment in the platform, while so much money was being invested elsewhere by the State.  In fact, if we focus on the station as a case study, it is interesting to note the, as Kehoe calls it, ‘long stagnation’ of the orchestra throughout the decades, only culminating in a well manned orchestra towards the latter half of the twentieth century as it slowly evolved into the National Symphony Orchestra as we know it today (Kehoe, 2013, p.908). 

The Station Orchestra would remain at its strength of six performers until 1932, at which point its string section would increase to twelve and timpani with some wind would be included (Kehoe, 2013, p.907). The “orchestra” (and I use the term in inverted commas, as there is no justification for titling it that in this state) was, as Kehoe puts it, a “multipurpose workhorse used to present a wide range of different kinds of music” (Kehoe, 2016, p.2). Despite this purpose, the support received by the budding orchestra was largely underwhelming; being an entity supervised by the Department of Post and Telegraphs, 2RN was under constant scrutiny by the Department of Finance. The officials that ran the station would eventually discover that the Department of Finance was consistently challenging their budgetary needs, and that any proposals for the development of the service, including proposals to expand the orchestra, would come up against strong resistance from the civil servants based in Merrion Street. As a result, the Station would continue to receive inadequate funding for years to come, an issue that would lead to pay parity between male and female orchestra members as it grew in numbers (Kehoe, 2016, p.3).

It is blatantly obvious here that, as a result of the government’s ever-watching eye and scrutinous management of finances, the country was suffering from any cultural advancements from this new state body, least of all in the field of music.

ii) - State Regulation of Musical Activity

As you will have gathered at this stage, the Department of Finance was the hand of the government that was tasked with regulating matters of state interest after the establishment of the nation state. Anne Mullaney-Dignam notes the department of finance had a direct role in the maintaining music through the state’s bodies, but also in the “development, and the regulation, of music and musical activity itself” (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.148), meaning that the state ultimately had a hand in regulating musical activity on a countrywide scale, which was not received well, or understood completely by Irish citizens, and which lead only to an prolongation of the retardation of Irish music culture.

While one of the first issues raised in the new government might have been to attempt to inject a dose of culture into the country through the Aonach Tailteann, which eventually went ahead in 1924, it is interesting to note that one of the first elements of correspondence dispatched to the government concerned a matter of their policy with regards to the importing of musical instruments (O’Leary, 1922, p.1). The Department of Finance responded by declaring that a duty of 33 ⅓ percent would be charged to those importing instruments as ad valorem taxation, which impacted the organisation of events that would transpire afterwards. The Aonach Tailteann festival, which was essentially dedicated to sporting events, but would feature many competitions of a musical nature, suffered from, as Anne Mullaney-Dignam puts it, “a low level of musical appreciation or indeed musical culture [...] evidenced by the rather low attendance figures at the musical competitions”. On the matter John Larchet, in the his essay A Plea for Music, called the resulting attendance of the music aspect of the festival “a cause of injury rather than of benefit to the musical taste of the city”, which featured largely advertised vocalists as opposed to instrumentalists that were to sing songs that were not even rooted in Irish culture (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.15). But surely Ireland was not devoid of her own instrument making capabilities, why would there have been such a lack of instrumental performances, even in the event of this levy? As a matter of fact, the period dictated otherwise; the Freeman’s Journal in May of 1923 reveals that there was a lack of instrument making in the Irish state at this time, with only “bagpipes and occasionally flutes” being constructed here. This was largely due to the high import duties of instrument parts from the UK, as the first World War had heightened the cost of manufacturing these parts abroad, making it as the Freeman’s Journal would put it, “industrially uneconomic” to be able to create them here (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.150). The issue that arose from this was that the public weren’t willing to purchase instruments as such a premium, which would lead to the issue of a lack of performers not just at the Aonach Tailteann, but also at privately organised music competitions held by the likes of Feis Ceoil, the Royal Irish Academy and (perhaps on a lesser scale) Conradh na Gaeilge. Again referring back the the Freeman’s Journal, which on the issue said that the levy would lead to a serious downturn in sales and business if not alleviated, “this would considerably defer return to normal conditions. The public will not understand the rise in retail prices necessarily brought on by the duty” (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.150). In essence, the government’s decision to regulate the distribution of musical instruments lead to self injury when it came to attempting a cultural fete, leading to an unforeseen obstruction of musical advancement under the new nation state.

In terms of how the new government handled matters of cultural development, as evident from above, up to this point it may be fair to say that errors were made in the furthering of musical cultural development that could be seen by those who would succeed them. However, skipping ahead to the installation of the Fianna Fáil government of 1932, we can see a weakness emerge in their proverbial armour as a state body with the passing of the Public Dance Halls Act of 1935. While the act may not have referred to any particular type of music or musical activity, it did detail the “licensing, control and supervision of places used for public dancing, and to make provision for other matters connected with the matters aforesaid” (Dáil Éireann, 1935, p.i). This meant that all areas where forms of celebrative dancing, or specifically Ceilís as Ní Fhuartháin refers them to as, required a license to be held which according to the act itself would need to be obtained “by persons displaying manners of good character” from a local judge, and anything outside of these boundaries would be deemed illegal (Dáil Éireann, 1935, p.ix).

The first Ceilí, as Ní Fhuartháin says, was a marked sign of “musical and cultural renewal” after the events of the Famine had finally passed (Ní Fhuartháin, 2016, p.1). Within the realm of music, they provided a platform for musicians to showcase their skill set in an event that would “last longer than a nine day novena” (Ní Fhuartháin, 2016, p.3). Prior to the installation of any governing body before the Rising, which Ní Fhuartháin calls a “temporal pivot or locus” in terms of how ceilís changed, they were largely social spaces that occurred in dance halls and carnivals that ran frequently as fundraisers and after-work entertainment. These cultivated musical culture in Ireland preceding the Rising, and would continue to run in the decades following it. The passing of this bill, however, meant that the music played at these events were dictated by the personal taste of music specific to the judge in question. This meant, according to Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin in a 2005 issue of New Hibernia Review, that the act “was often misapplied as it was applied, causing confused interpretation” (Ó hAllmhuráin, 2005, p11). This obviously leads to a question of preference, as personal preference may have created a sense of corruption where certain musics were denied their performance, ultimately deterring the spread of certain music in the country which naturally slowed down the progression of music culture development.

It is clear to see that, as a result of intervention from the emerging nation state, the progress of music culture in Ireland hit a halting point. Within the walls of the government, priority was given to larger projects that had nothing to do with cultural development, with a lighter focus on the establishment of bona fide concert orchestra consequently leading to a stagnating development of such an entity. In terms of the public continuing on in their own musical ventures, the intervention of the state too led to an impediment of the natural progression of communal music culture, meaning that private entities the promoted music were halted as a result of state regulation and the disintegration of ceilí culture as it had previously existed. Ultimately, the intervention of the state in music culture was a deficit to Irish people.

II - Censorship and Music Relating to 1916

i) - Irish Composers Neglecting Nationalism as Inspiration?

The 1916 rising left the country in a state of flux; people didn’t know what was going to follow in the coming months, and the implications of the revolt were as of yet unknown to the country. To many, life went on as it was prior, but for certain organisations, it was important not to tread over the proverbial line that had been drawn as a result of the surrender of the Irish people. One early instance of this was the 1916 Feis Ceoil, which had been rescheduled to July of that year instead of taking place during its regular slot in the Spring. Eamonn Ceannt, on of the rebel leaders who had been executed during the Rising, had initially been scheduled to judge the pipe section of the competition, but had his name stripped from the record of the planned event, and to this day his name is absent from the society’s records (Mooney, 2016, p.1). On top of this, the manifesto of the event had been altered to take the emphasis of the contest away from the Irish music genre, now reading “Performers must adhere to Music from Ireland” as opposed to “Irish Music” (Mooney, 2016, p.2) The results of the contest were biased towards non-nationalistic composers, and the vocal contests were changed so no songs would be sung in the Irish language. In essence, the entire competition had been censored as a result of the events earlier that year, leading to a Feis Ceoil that stood for nothing it had defined itself as, bar the title. While it may have been a display of extreme reaction to the events that preceded it, the Feis Ceoil was the first obvious display of an entity attempting to distance itself away from the events of a sense of Irishness, more specifically nationalism, by refusing to acknowledge anything that might be related to it, opting instead to invest itself in other musics and performances that would not remind the public of the inspiration for the Rising, and perhaps also to attempt to fend off republican ideals. This mode of self censorship was not only used by the Feis organisation, but also would be employed by composers of music in Ireland who would begin to write new music after the event had passed.

In his paper, Beyond 1916—composers and politics, composition and politics, musicology and politics, Dr Mark Fitzgerald notes that after 1916, “It is noticeable that very few Irish composers have engaged with nationalist and political issues in their music” (Fitzgerald, 2016, p.1), something that is indeed noted by several other commentators on the issue (including the likes of Ita Beausang and, more notably, Aloys Fleischmann). Fitzgerald notes that many composers believe that music, or more specifically art music, “should have nothing to do with the world from which it stems”. This statement, cold as it may come across, is supported by the approach many composers took to their commissions in the decades following 1916. Supporting this, we can take a look at Ben Dwyer’s book Different Voices and an included interview with composer Seoirse Bodley, who wrote a suite of music for the centenary marking the birth of Padraig Pearse. When asked about her composition relating to an issue of nationalist significance, she responded by downplaying the notion, saying “If you wished to be so [nationalist], that’s right. Well it’s just that I didn’t like the thought of following along the road of violence, if you know what I mean. To that extent I felt like pulling back [...] I went back and found the source material for that, at least as far as text is concerned, in the things that interested Pearse himself” (Dwyer, 2014, p.29). While this may be a later example of this apparent avoidance of nationalism, a simple look at the compiled list of nationalist pieces (included in Ita Beausang’s paper Irish Composers and 1916. In: Music in Ireland: 1916 and Beyond) will show that between 1916 and 1996, there were only 27 moderately “nationalist” commissioned pieces written in the Irish context and, more ironically, the most arguably nationalist of all included being composed by an English hand in the form of Arnold Bax’s In Memoriam (Beausang, 2016, p.2).

(Beausang, 2016, pi-ii)

To further lessen the above listings, of the 14 composers mentioned at least 3 of them stand out as writers that vocalised their dissent at the nationalist foundation the their compositions were intended on adhering to; Brian Boydell, as we will see later, acted on his own inspirational terms in composing a cantata for the 50th Anniversary of the Rising, O’Riada had begun to grow tired of commissions surrounding 1916 (as will also see later) leading to his later scores lacking any nationalist fuel, and Bodley as we have already mentioned composed with a different motive to Pearse’s political achievements, creating a commemoration of Pearse that, as Fitzgerald says, “manages to write Pearse out of the composition in any direct sense” (Fitzgerald, 2016, p.3). Fitzgerald also writes about composer John Buckley approaching his commission in a similar fashion to Bodley’s, noting that his ballet interpretation of Pearse’s Fornocht do Chonnac Thú was grounded on themes of the poet “rejecting sexual desire for his loved one (whatever that might have been) in favour of sacrificial death for his country”, essentially removing it from the major events of Pearse’s life in favour of an emphasis on general desire (Fitzgerald, 2016, p.3). The saving grace of the list comes in the form of Aloys Fleischmann, whose “inoffensive patriotism” in his commemorative piece, Ómos don Phiarsach, is a “ telling example of ‘the manner in which [Fleischmann] compromised with the insistent demands for a nationalist expression” which seeks to “‘Reclaim the Spirit of 1916’, regarding the revisionist perspective as apostasy” (Graydon, 1999, p.191).

It is clear to see that there was a serious lack of nationalist compositions being written in Ireland after 1916, but Bax suggests, in his foreword to Fleischmanns book Music in Ireland , that the compositional scene within Ireland was not all that strong whatsoever “In [his] early Dublin days I moved in an almost wholly literary circle. There was no talk of music whatever” (Fleischmann, 1952, p.iv). Regardless of this, it is clear from the above that when it did come to those who were commissioned to compose such music, their adherence to a grounded sense of nationalism was heavily augmented as a result on their negative outlook of the events of 1916.

ii) - “Commemorating” the 50th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising

John Gillis defines commemorative activity as “social and political, for it involves the coordination of individual and group memories, whose results may appear consensual when they are in fact the processes of intense contest, struggle and, in some instances, annihilation” (Gillis, 1994, p.5). It was not until 1966 that there would be an official Easter rising commemoration by the state of Ireland, at which point it became inevitable that such a commemoration would need to take place to mark the event’s ‘Golden Jubilee’. The then taoiseach of the Fianna Fáil party, Sean Lemass, was a veteran of the Rising, and wanted to “convey Ireland as a modern country” to the public, and provide an opportunity to reinvent the message of the events of Easter week (O’Donnell, 2016, p.1). This would carry an implied sense of celebration through modern mediums, as well as contain new works, but how things ultimately transpired would not be subject to discussion here if they had panned out in this manner. Lemass noted that government wanted the state’s commemorations to be “a delicate negotiation between tradition and change” that would feature a mass reconciling between traditionalists, such as De Valera and Frank Aiken, and those who didn’t subscribe to the independent Ireland in the manner by which it was achieved, emphasising this as a something to impose on the youth of the country (Higgins, Holohan and O'Donnell, 2006, np). In terms of how the commemorations were organised, it was a matter of careful selection in how they were structured, a process which extended to the music that was included in the program, and that ultimately lead to a sense of censored music being produced on behalf of the state that had nothing to do with the commemorations bar the event labelled to them.

The commemorations lasted a week, featuring a long military parade that included music from the Army No 1. Band, the music played by whom was almost devoid of any nationalist piece of music, the band instead playing fanfare-like celebratory pieces that were typical of celebratory instances (O’Donnell, 2016, p.2). In terms of commissions for the celebrations, the government had commissioned Sean O’Ríada to compose the score for a new film by Louis Marcus, entitled Tine Bheo, to premiere in the Savoy Cinema that was actually centered around the event of Easter Week. The issue here was that the film was filmed as a documentary, the narrator of which spoke in Irish which wasn’t widely spoken at the time, so the film’s contents would go largely misunderstood as the audience listened to an O’Riada score that, according to O’Donnell, wasn’t even composed explicitly with 1916 in mind, stating that O’Ríada was “tired of 1916” by the time it came to composing the score for the film (O’Donnell, 2016, p.2). Given this apparently poor attempt at commemorating the rising appropriately, the saving grace of the commemorations might have come in the form of what was advertised as “a commemorative concert” entitled Cuimhneachán 1916 to be performed in the Gaiety Theatre on Easter Monday of 1966 (Gittins, 2016, np). This concert would feature a new work by an Irish composer, but the issue was that the composer was chosen by the government.

Brian Boydell, a protestant, anglo Irish citizen and pacifist, was the candidate approached to commission this piece. His composition, A Terrible Beauty is Born, was a cantata featuring a lack of any material inspired directly by the Rising, instead featuring a name borrowed from a poem by W.B Yeats and featuring verses borrowed from poems by Yeats, Thomas MacDonagh, Francis Ledwidge, George Russell, Dora Sigerson, Thomas Kettle (Gittins, 2016, np). According to O’Donnell, the commission interested him immensely, as can be seen in his response to being approached below;

“First of all I was excited about the fact that I was offered a commission at all. Being a protestant and anglo irish composer, and a pacifist to boot. But that challenge in itself excited me enormously because of two things: First of all, in order to try and get over a point of view, this is quite extra musical if you like. There is the point of view that what we should be doing for the 50th anniversary of 1916 is not waving flags about the past, but thinking about what we should do for the country for the future. In fact the constructive pacifist ideal. And the second thing was knowing that one was writing a piece of music which was for a particular occasion and there was a problem here in writing something which would appeal on that particular occasion without playing it down.” (O’Donnell, 2016, p.3)

To add further questionability to the event, the premiere was preceded by a rendition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3: Eroica, a symphony originally written and dedicated to the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (Lobkowicz.cz, 2010, np), meaning the only inherently commemorative item of the entire concert was the national anthem, Amhrán na bhfiann*, which preceded the concert (Gittins, 2016, np).

It is clear from the above that the Irish government chose their program quite carefully so as not to disturb the status quo that they had been try to build and preserve since their creation; the careful choice to film their commemorative films in Irish, with music from a composer who had grown tired of composing for the period, meant that the significance of their release was both downplayed and limited to a specific audience. Also, the commemorations themselves were treated more as a musical celebration for veterans of event rather than a remembrance ceremony to recall the events of the rising itself, something mirrored in the centenary celebrations 50 years later. The proverbial nail in the coffin comes in the form of this “commemoration” concert, which completely lack any sort of commemorative material at all.

• It is worth noting that Peadar Kearney, who penned the original “Soldier’s Song” prior to its translation to Irish, never actually received royalties from the state after it had been integrated into the political system as the country’s national anthem (Roche, 2016, np). This meant that the only authentically commemorative material performed at the concert wasn’t even done so with the correct permission, essentially becoming a public performance of a pirated song.

III - Musical Hegemony: Independent Organisations influencing the Irish Government? i) - Music “Education” and the Catholic Church/Gaelic League

As I have discussed at length already, the establishment of the Irish state governing body led to a changing face in Irish culture. One of the goals set out by this new government was the creation and implementation of an educational system that complimented the independence won by the state some months earlier . While a sense of nationalism with regards to a rebellious Irish nature may have been subject to censorship by the government, it became apparent that a more traditional sense of nationalism, promoting a sense of ‘irishness’, was a clear aim in this new educational structure particularly in the area of music, which was used as “a powerful site for enculturating the young in nationalist ideals” (McCarthy, 1989, p.65). However, this would lead to a serious problem in how the youth of Ireland were being focused, as this essentially hegemonic means of educating future generations was devoid of any knowledge of other musical ideas and influence from elsewhere.

One of the main issues that would permeate this new form of education was the increasingly pressing alliance that the state shared with the Catholic church, who heavily petitioned for a hand in how the progress of music was made in schools (featuring one particular phrase mentioned in the Dáil, “‘beautiful music heard in church on Sundays assists the Irish person to pray twice as well!” (Anne-Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.166). Ultimately, the government conceded to the church, leading to them becoming a body who would largely affect the direction of music education and becoming an integral part of music instruction in national schools by 1920 (McCarthy, 1989, p.66). Of course, the petition of the church to have an authoritative voice in Irish education was not without motive, and served more as a purpose for self promotion and recruitment as opposed to educating for the sake of the spread of knowledge. Plainchant, an old form of hymnal church music that was prevalent in Ireland in centuries prior, became subject to extensive promotion in the education system, which as McCarthy says “served to prepare national and secondary school teachers to teach chant, and thus improve the quality of church music nationally” (McCarthy, 1989, p.69). To add further proof to this, the years following their incorporation into the educational system led to an increase in church events, which largely incorporated children’s choirs consisting of schoolchildren, and were celebrated as “triumphs of Catholic culture in Ireland” which enabled the church body to “further induct [children] into the practice of Catholicism, while simultaneously fostering Catholic culture through their performance” (McCarthy, 1989, p.69). It can be concluded from this evidence, then, that the incorporation of the Catholic church in music education was to serve their own promotional and recruitment purposes as opposed to actually promoting music education among the Irish youth, and music itself was used as a religious socialiser rather that something that promoted a sense of nationalist ideology, contradicting the initial statement made by McCarthy above.

Similarly to the Catholic church, but adhering to a more ‘Irish’ sense of nationalism, the Gaelic League pressed the state to advance the “cultural nationalist agenda”, resulting in the insertion of a clause to promote Irish traditional music and song as a marker of “Gaelic identity and only second to the Irish language” in the educational system (McCarthy, 1989, p.65). In preparation of the incorporation of the new educational system by the government in 1922, language revivalist and Gaelic League member Timothy Corcoran said that “the union of simple Irish with Irish music would certainly be the royal high road to the restoration of the spoken language and to the development of new literature for the people of Ireland” (Corcoran, 1923, p.340). These sentiments were incorporated into the programme, which meant that Irish language songs dominated school music, with the official government policy requiring any singing carried out in schools must be done so though Irish, and that all songs taught in classrooms be in done so in the Irish language (Dáil Éireann, 1922, p.14). The issue here, again, is that the inclusion of this clause was to further the cause of the Gaelic League over the forwarding of music education. Being only interested in the promotion of their own causes they, as McCarthy puts it “served to revitalise Garlic culture in schools and their surrounding communities”, completely diminishing the purpose of the musical education system in favour of their own case (McCarthy, 1989, p.73).

The speed at which the government adopted the proposed educational measures of both partied make it clear that there was a rush to establish a sense of communal identity emanating from the State body, as Ernest Gellner observes, “they were eager to forge that homogenous culture-and-state”(which leads to a question of why it took so long to invest in cultural mediums of broadcasting, such as 2RN mentioned above) (Gellner, 1997, p.46). As these Gaelic, Catholic ideals began to permeate this ‘cultural nationalist’ form of hegemonic, educational distillation, they were indoctrinated into Gaelic, Catholic culture through their participation in these contexts of music performance. Whether or not this was intentional on part of the Irish government, it is clear that the field branded as ‘music education’ was more of a front for the state body to exercise its influence on the youth of Ireland in how it could control the spread of culture, rather than actually educate future generations about the history and theory of music, which was evident to the rest of the world; A study of music in the national schools of Ireland in the 30 year period between 1921 and 1950, according to McCarthy, “illustrates the important role music played in advancing the essentialist ideals of the emergent state” (McCarthy, 1989, p.73), and a report carried out by UNESCO on the cultural education promoted in Irish schools revealed that the average Irish child is “artistically among the most under-educated in Europe” in terms of music education. (UNESCO, 1989, p.9).

ii) - “Unwholesome” Jazz: Cultural Manipulation through Radio

The subjugation of the educational system at the hands of the Gaelic League and the Catholic church would not be their last attempt at directing the path of of musical exposure that Ireland would encounter. Their lobbying to influence the direction of the country through the education system in 1922 perhaps endowed them with a sense of comfortability and complaisance with the state body. This may be evident in the establishment of the Censorship of Publications Board and Censorship of Publications Act of 1929, something which was pushed into law as a result of committees from both parties declaring their opposition against “evil” and “morally corrupting” works of literature in 1926, as well as working to report to the government on how effective (or more so ineffective) the (already in place) contemporary censorship laws were (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.184). It would not be long before both bodies would encounter a musical entity that would challenge the direction they had set the focus of music in the country to in the form of the Jazz genre.

In his article Impressions in Dublin in volume 34 of the Dublin Historical Record, musicologist Barra Boydell said on the period “Jazz was causing great moral concern in some circles” (Boydell, 1984, p.89), which may have been a slight understatement. In the early 1930’s, radio in Ireland had begun to pick up a slight pace in momentum since the establishment of 2RN in 1926; stations had begun to broadcast certain musics that originated from outside the country, most prominently the “paganic” inclined Jazz genre which was “far worse than drunkenness or landlordism” (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.186), which opened up the potential for exposure of new music to Irish people. The issue here was that, with this outgrowth, there came implication of a political nature, as McCarthy puts it “mass media such as radio served as instruments of political policy and opened up new possibilities for the manipulation of culture” (McCarthy, 1989, p.70). This essentially allowed for stations to subvert the so called “cultural nationalist” hegemonic message being fed to the public through the powers of the Catholic church and the Gaelic League, who were quite unhappy with such actions. January of 1934 saw the launch of an anti jazz campaign by the Catholic Church and the Gaelic League, promoting a central message that Jazz had a denationalisation influence on Irish culture. As Boydell details;

“3000 people marched under the leadership of the clergy and the Gaelic League with slogans such as ‘Down with Jazz’ and ‘Out with Paganism’. But the concern was not purely on moral grounds. The involvement  of the Gaelic League on that occasion was not exceptional, for the Secretary of the League sent letters to Corporations and Councils throughout the country seeking endorsement of their objection to jazz being broadcast by the radio stations as being “contrary to the spirit of Christianity and Nationalism’

(Boydell, 1984, p.89).

The government’s response to the protest provokes a question as to whether the state body was knowingly affording both parties control over the spread of cultural mediums. As Pádraig Ó Fearfaíl says in his narrative, The Story of Conradh na Gaeilge, the institution “sent a deputation to the Minister for for Posts and Telegraphs in 1933, asking for more Irish music on the radio and less jazz” (Ó Fearaíl, 1975, p.47), which was followed by a series of debates continuing right through the 1930’s which, after much persistence, resulted in a ban of the genre from Irish radio in the early 1940’s (Gibbons, 1996, p.45).

This ban may have come across as somewhat unwarranted, as many of the supporters of the protesting movement didn’t actually know what jazz music was, with most opposers “relating it to whatever or immoral activities they read or heard that it was associated with rather than a form, or forms, of musical expression” (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, p.187). This was true with figureheads from both opposing parties also, with members of the Catholic church admitting they knew nothing about jazz except that the actions it apparently provoked were “suggestive and demoralizing”, while members of the Gaelic League merely followed the church's stance on the genre, calling it music that went ‘against Christianity, learning and the spirit of nationality’ (Anne Mullaney-Dignam, 2008, pp.187-189). This ignorance to the genre suggests that both parties were merely in fear of the genre, which prevails today as a form of popular music; Should it have grown in popularity it may have potentially subverted the means of cultural control that radio as a medium had bestowed the Gaelic league, which according to McCarthy was being used by them “as a site for establishing a canon of Irish music and for excluding ‘other’, non-irish music, regardless of it’s popularity among the people” (McCarthy, 1989, p.71). This again, like their authorised influence over music education, points to the notion that they were merely using radio transmissions to forward the cause of their own organisation as opposed to advancing the cultural taste of the country, while the Catholic church, in a backwards thinking manner, were afraid that the genre would promote a sense of anti-christian behaviour, and as a result worked with the Gaelic League to remove it from their proverbial blocked path.

It is clear to see from the above that the government of Ireland were not operating on their own terms. This apparent hegemony, established in tandem with the Catholic church and the Gaelic League, led to a similar halt in cultural retardation that we saw with the shift in priority away from the development of Radio 2RN, and the evidence given to support the above argument might also suggest that the two are not musically exclusive. In fact, the president of the Gaelic League, P.T McGinley, said in an interview with the Irish Times in January of 1934 that not only were the organisation against the Jazz genre;

“We [The Gaelic League] are against all things foreign in this country and want to get back to native culture, the first step being to destroy every trace of English culture in Ireland” (McGinley, 1934, p.2)

Was it the case that the the Irish people were subject to cultural hegemonic leadership in more aspects of life than music?

Conclusion

It is interesting to note how malleable the emerging nation state was when it came to outside influence, and to how protective the government were of country’s status and identity as an independent nation, afraid to commemorate the events of the insurgency, perhaps for fear of risking a repeat of the events or it simply being too early to celebrate it appropriately without offending people. For any new, emerging government in a state that would have been under both a different ruling body, as well as different governmental status, it is acceptable to assume that mistakes will be made, progression will be slow and other organisations will be leaned on for help. In the case of the Irish Free State, however, is it fair to apply the same empathies? In a country that had to fight for its freedom, maybe not as much, but it does however give rise to fair circumstances under which the country would be more reserved and focused on cultivating a more strict and historically enriched sense of nationalism.

However, as Ireland was on the cusp of academic revival, which included music culture, the circumstances were present to take the country in either direction, musically speaking. In terms of the lag in musical culture, the emerging government became prey to the rapacious mannerisms exhibited by both the Catholic church and the Gaelic League, leading the stagnating progress of music culture, when the establishment of “musical bodies”, as Larchet says, to manage both music education and regulation would have been a wiser choice, allowing for a greater sense of impartiality towards music and a more cultured population at an earlier point in Irish history. Ask an elderly person about their early knowledge of music and you’ll almost certain be given the stereotypical “diddle-dee-idle-dee”, as opposed to the modern music student educated through the works of Bach, Tchaikovsky etc.

I have a theory of my own to add to this set of circumstances; Going back to the letters penned by Larchet, it would seem that his attempts to encourage the state were done so in vain, but more interestingly the timeliness of his letter is close enough to the publication of the government's education bill. As Larchet’s letters were aimed at the government, it might suggested that his opinions, as well as his position, influenced the apparent rush to establish this cultural identity, as noted by Gellner. If this were true, it could be assumed that the government itself was both under pressure and perhaps culturally inept, incapable of maintaining a sense of progressive art culture within the country, and instead leading to this outsourcing of cultural management to the parties that would benefit from it the most, while satisfying the restrictive nature they exhibited themselves.

In conclusion, regardless of the motivation, it is clear that the hastiness of the government and their adherence to a more traditional sense of what it means to be ‘Irish’ led to a situation whereby the progression, education and, to a certain degree, creation of music was practically non existent in an Ireland in the years following the country’s independence. It is fair to say that the impact of the Irish Independence on the history of music that followed it in Ireland was largely negative.

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J.S Bach in Leipzig: Compositions & Context 20th May, 2016

It can be argued that the track record of composition that defines Bach’s notoriety has raised him to the pinnacle of composers in terms of western music. It was true that he is celebrated for how renowned he is, but much of his work is subject to contextual circumstances that would have affected him, for better or for worse. His first position in Arnstadt at age 18, and later in Mulhausen at age 23, were subject to the relief of actually finding work as a young composer, which are reflected in his works as he composed primarily to fulfill the needs of the positions he held (Sartorius, 2014, np.). Bach’s contextual circumstances in his later life, specifically during his time in Leipzig, were perhaps the most tolling years of his compositional career. Having just finished grieving at the death of is his first wife, Maria Barbara, after her untimely passing in 1720, he moved to the region, which had a population of around 25,000 (J.S. Bach: Life and Works, 2008, np.), in 1722 following the vacating of the positions of music director of the main churches and choirmaster of St Thomas’ Church, a position that Wolff called "the leading cantorate in Protestant Germany" (Wolff, 2013, p.253). These positions saw him in charge of music at 4 churches in the city, while he simultaneously composed cantatas and other church musics in the time he spent outside of the school (Wolff, 2013, p.254). In 1729, he was appointed director of the Leipzig collegium musicum, which provoked him to compose concertos and chamber works and well as pieces for organ and harpsichord. In this essay, I will be discussing the compositions of Bach during his time in Leipzig, examining the context of his compositional duties before analysing, to a certain degree, his methods of composition, specifically in relation to his Church Cantatas and, to a lesser degree, his B minor mass structure and Easter Passions.

Bach is 36 when he decides to leave Curtain in pursuit of a new life in Saxony. At the time of his arrival, Leipzig is one of the major trading centres of Germany, and the notion of a major city probably came with the assumption of a need for composers. While the position at St Thomas’ Church became vacant, the town council was undecided in terms of who to instate at the helm of the position, and they notably don’t consider Bach to be the ideal candidate (Walker, 2013, np.). When other applicants withdraw, Bach moves up the list, and is commissioned to compose 2 church cantatas as samples of his work, which ultimately convince them to appoint him. In the context of the music he was set to compose, the contract of engagement that he signs with the town council requires fulfills his duties “faithfully and diligently”, that “he shall be a good example to boys by living a life of honour and humility”, and “show all due respect and obedience to a council of high wisdom, in whose churches music shall be such that it be not too long or too operatic, but rather inspire its listeners to prayer” (J.S. Bach: Life and Works, 2008, np.).

Leipzig was a growing commercial region with an ever expanding population. The city was a center for publishing and was host to Leipzig University, founded in 1409 (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.438). St. Thomas School accepted students both locally and abroad, providing multiple scholarships to prospective students who could demonstrate musical and scholastic potential and ability. As a requirement of being granted a scholarship, the students were required to sing or play instrumental music at services spread across the 4 churches within Leipzig, as well as participating in other musical duties outlined by the school. As cantor of the institution, Bach was obligated to teach music, among other subjects such as Latin, each day to the schoolchildren, alongside compositional duties which saw him compose, transpose, copy and rehearse music for the church services which he had subscribed to (Spitta, 1899, p.11). Bach had never been more busy in his life, and perhaps he wanted things to be this way, as the more preoccupied he was with work, the less time he had to contemplate other issues that may have plagues his mind. Bach directed the most skilled choir of the 4 churches, while supervising the other 3 which were directed by advanced students of the school whom he used as assistants (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.438). To his best students, he offered musical tuition and training so as to include them in the church ensemble at the weekends, which also features performers from the university located within the city, something which would cause contention in a dispute over “prefect’s responsibilities” later on, causing a standoff between him and the head of St. Thomas’ which would “polarise the people of Leipzig”, leading school lessons to taper off (Wolff, 2013, p.348).

In his initial years as composer from the church, he composed at least one major work on a weekly basis for presentation at the mass celebrations at the ends of the week. This pace, however, gradually slowed, as his duties outside of clerical and educational definites, which included providing music for ceremonies within the city, university celebrations, spontaneous events such as weddings, funerals and homecomings, were wearing him out as a composer. One might argue too that was not being paid well enough for the conditions he had to satisfy; for all his work he was only being paid a “comfortable” middle-class income, and was provided an apartment within St Thomas’ boarding area where both he and his family had to reside, with only a small study being provided to him as a work area (Palisca, Grout and Burkholder, 2013, p,348), leading him to head a submission to the council featuring the title ‘Short, yet most highly necessary draft of well composed church music’, in which he compared the poverty of Leipzig musicians with their more generously paid counterparts in Dresden (Bach, 1730, p.1).

The Church Cantatas Bach’s initial year as cantor and music director in Leipzig saw him write out the sequence of happenings for the morning services of the first Sunday of Advent, in terms of musical complementation. His main focus was in the cantata, or the “principal composition” as Bach referred to it as (Wolff, 1998, p.113). The Cantata was usually set to the Gospel reading which it would immediately follow, and the sermon of the mass itself would usually follow the same theme as the Gospel also. The choir would also sing a motet followed by the Kyrie, which then would be followed by a set of chorales sang by the congregation (Oron, 2013, np). Each of these musical items would be introduced by an often improvised prelude on organ by Bach (Wolff, 1998, p.114).

The church cantata was a typically Lutheran musical item that Bach would encounter properly for the first time when instated to his position in Leipzig. Following a template set out by Lutheran activist, Erdmann Neumeister, the cantata was set to liturgical Lutheran texts, particularly biblical verse and chorale texts (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.443). The format found much popularity among Lutherans due to its versing, which apparently “brought together their faith’s Orthodox and Pietistic tendencies, blending objective and subjective as well as formal and emotional elements,” (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.443). The format was so popular with Bach attached to it that the 4 churches of Leipzig would have to take turn in hearing Bach’s direction of the Cantata.

In managing the choirs for each weekend celebration, Bach would bring his best singers to the church whose turn it was to play audience to the composition, while a deputy conductor directed the second best choir in another church, while lesser experienced singers and conductors would carry out the same in the other two churches. In his 1730 memorandum to the Leipzig city council, Bach detailed the ideal set of requirements for the choirs of the churches as 12 singers who would sing in polyphonic harmony, which was the case for the top three directed choirs, while the remaining, least experienced choir would be limited to only 8 members and would sing in monophonic texture. With regards to the Cantata, each cantata would require a solo voice along with 3 ripienists for each vocal line, of which there were 4- Soprano, Alto, Tenor Bass (Hoffman, 2008, np). The soloists would sing the solo vocal line, which featured a lot of movement, over the ripienists who would then be joined by the soloists during choral movements. From notation that has been examined, it is assumed that BAch would often perform Cantatas with a maximum of 8 voices, usually consisting of around 5 or 6. The orchestra that would accompany the Cantata consisted of a string section, continuo, some woodwind and on certain occasions brass and percussion (Wolff, 2012, p18).

Bach was required to compose upwards of at least one cantata a week as per his contract with the city council, meaning that he was composing a minimum of 52 and then one for each feast day on the Lutheran calendar. Outside of the church, he was also required to compose a cantata for the annual election of a new city council for the town’s governing body, as well as funerals and weddings as previously mentioned. It is estimated that between the years of 1723 and 1729 that Bach had composed near enough to 4 complete annual cycles, which consisted of 60 cantatas each, which begins to give rise to an explanation as to the massive catalogue composed of compositions by Bach; in around 200 of his original Leipzig church cantatas have been preserved, along with around 20 written outside of church motive (British Library Online, 2009, np.).

Nun Komm Der Heiden Heiland To analyse how Bach composed his cantatas is something that might be subject to a certain degree of difficulty; due to the sheer broadness and variation compositional style, as a direct result of the ever changing narrative they’re set to, its extremely troublesome to find a single example. Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland (BWV 62), which was composed in 1724 for the first Sunday of that year’s Advent season (Wolf, 2002, p.569), might offer us this insight, as it illustrates some of Bach’s typical procedures carried out while setting text to music. At this stage in his compositional life in Leipzig, Bach had become more comfortable with writing cantatas and had moved away from original works, now tending to set most of them to pre existing chorales. The poet who composed the lyrics to the cantatas at this stage made use of the initial and final stanzas of a chorale to create both the opening chorus and closing chorus, while rephrasing the central stanzas so they might be suitable for translation to arias and recitatives. From this, Bach would begin to work the material into his cantata template, basing the opening chorus on the chorale melody, setting the middle to operatically styled recitative and aria like movements, and ending the cantata with a 4 part harmony that wasn’t overly complicated. The key thing here is that the chorale melody itself was being subverted by Bach, taking attention away any reference to the source material where he could (Wolff, 2012, p.198).

For Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland in particular, Bach drew the cantata from the chorale of the same name penned by Martin Luther. The opening phrase can be seen in the image below;

(Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.447)

As can be often found in Bach’s choral compositions, the opening chorus shows an imaginative blend of different styles, which can be interpreted here as concerto and motet (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.445). The orchestra starts with a ritornello theme , featuring the chorale taking on the role of the cantus firmus in the bass section. The repeated, rising notes present are intended to evoke a feeling of anticipation in the text setting, essentially becoming word painting as the text edges closer to “herald the coming of the saviour” (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.445). Following concerto tropes, the ritornello provides a platform for musical movement in the piece, appearing on 3 occasions in an altered, shorter form before coming back in its original form at the end of the cantata. The 4 phrases of the chorale that would have originally been presented as different entities in the chorale form are here presented as the chorus line, set in the form of a cantus firmus, featuring imitation between the soprano line and the horns, while the other voices are set to imitative counterpoint, as can be seen in the first phrase above, along with the ritornello phrasing from the orchestra. This blend of “secular and sacred” models, “old style” counterpoint and a cantus firmus with “modern Italianate” style is, as Burkholder, Grout and Palisca say, “characteristic of Bach, creating a depth of meanings through references to many familiar types of music” (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.446).

On the Collegium Musicum, Mass in B minor and the Easter Passions While the cantatas may have been the most frequently composed form that Bach would compose for, it is important not to ignore two of his other rather important forms of church music he composed while resident in Leipzig. The compositions of the Collegium musicum, the B minor Mass and the Passions are perhaps two of his most widely studied works, as we’ll investigate below.

Bach had been largely disengaged from composing Orchestral music for the best part of 9 years before re-entering the realm in 1730. Not since the composition of the Brandenburg Concertos had such an opportunity presented itself to Bach, but when he was made director of the Collegium Musicum of Leipzig University it forced his hand back to the style of composition. Made up of mostly university students, the organisation often presented outdoor concerts, for which Bach composed his two violin concertos, as well as his Concerto in D minor, for such concerts. The numbers of the group, along with the varied instruments the performers were skilled in, meant Bach could experiment with his modes of composition, and also enabled Bach to broaden his compositional style and performance skill. This lead to him being the first composer to both write and arrange concertos for one or more harpsichords and orchestra, which as Burkholder, Grout and Palisca say “he no doubt led in performance from the keyboard” (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.443). One concerto, arranged for 4 harpsichords and orchestra, was set to a Vivaldi scored concerto originally set to 4 violins. The directorship, as Wolff puts it, "consolidated Bach's firm grip on Leipzig's principal musical institutions" (Wolff, 2000, p.341).

It was in his later years, specifically the year before his death, that Bach would organise the Mass in B minor, in which he would in a sense abandon the Lutheran ideals and set the Catholic structural, liturgical setting of the Ordinary mass to music in what would be called “The Great Catholic Mass”. It was unusual for the a Lutheran to compose a missa tota, or short mass, as Stauffer notes (Stauffer, 1998, p48.) Set to 4 movements, the Kyrie & Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus and the Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei & Dona Nobis Pacem, Bach drew most of his inspiration for the musical setting from already extensive catalogue of music, borrowing ideas and styles from them, essentially creating a condensed work that would showcase his ability and skill developed throughout his life (Rathey, 2003, p2). Some of the structural elements to the Mass were already fully fledged compositions; Bach had already composed the Kyrie & Gloria for a mass in the Dresden Court in 1733 at the request of the Catholic elector of Saxony (hoping to obtain an honorary appointment to the electoral chapel, which he did would receive 3 years later in 1733), and the Sanctus had already been composed as part of cantata cycles for Christmas Day in 1724 (Rathey, 2003, p.2). He would go on to adapt some of the other sections from cantata movements that he had composed while both in Leipzig and prior to his arrival there, taking the German textual setting and replacing it with Latin words of the mass (Butt, 1991, p.83).

The new parts of the composition are subject to stylistic variation in how they were written. The Credo in particular is subject to quite a lot of movement, featuring the opening (and later the confiteor) being composed in stile antico (an older polyphonic style that was rooted in the music of the 16th century) while the central Et incarnus is written in a more modern style called seconda practica, which also features in earlier movements in the Sanctus (Rathey, 2003, p.13). All through the work, Bach set these contrasting styles beside each other creating a terraced structure of stylistic movement, creating as Butt puts it a “compendium of vocal sacred music” (Butt, 1991, p.78). The mass would never see performance until Bach’s passing, and is too long to function as regular service music at a traditional mass (it’s length reaching almost 2 hours). Burkholder, Grout and Palisca theorise the “it may have been intended as an anthology of movements, each a model of itr type, that could be performed separately” (Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, 2013, p.448).

Bach’s Passions were composed as part of his church positions for the Easter celebrations being carried out by the Lutheran churches in Leipzig while resident as cantor is St Thomas’. Composed in tandem with his cantatas, there were 4 created, both retelling the story of the crucifixion of Jesus. The passions, which were performed at Vespers On Good Friday evening, were based on the gospels of the 4 evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and would employ use of recitatives, arias, vocal ensembles, choruses and chorales sung by tutti featuring orchestral accompaniment across all performance (Wolff, 2012, p.4). Of the 4 composed only 2 survive, the St. John and St. Matthew Passions. Bach’s passions draw elements from a multitude of compositional style, again adhering to this “compendium” of styles mentioned by Butt previously. Elements of opera, cantata and oratorios can all be seen in Bach’s compositions here. Elements of opera can be seen in the narrative of the biblical story, which is sung in recitative style by a tenor voice above the entire score. Vocal soloists take on the roles of the central characters including Jesus and his apostles, who again sing their lines in an operatic style set to orchestral music, while a chorus sings the narrative of the surrounding crowds and other ensembles of people, oftentimes commenting on events akin to the likes of a Greek drama (Ambrose, 2012).

As Leipzig’s official music director, Bach’s solidified him as a “jack of all trades composer”, with duties include providing a musical framework for both liturgical and civic occasions being met with equal enthusiasm and compositional skill. It is not a surprise that Bach took on so much work, as the income provided by his positions was unequivocally too low, and festive music commissioned by both the nobility and the citizenry are a welcome source of income for Bach and his ever expanding family. His second wife, Anna Magdalena, a woman very diligent in cultural matters, meant that in Leipzig alone he had to cater for 6 children over the course of his time there. From 1740 onwards, Bach began to withdraw more and more from official musical life. He spent time composing and revising compositions, as well as giving private music lessons, but two unsuccessful eye operations, as a result of his failing health, almost left him blind, leading to the end of his compositional career. On the 28th of July 1750, Bach died aged 66 leaving behind him a life and work that extended to more than 1000 compositions of spiritual and secular cantatas, motets, passion plays and countless instrumental pieces which were always placed dedicated to God, featuring the letters S.D.G at the end of his compositions, meaning “Soli Deo Gloria” (translating to english as “glory to God alone”). This accounts for his adherence to church music on such a restrictive level, as well as his move to Leipzig which at the time was considered on of the capitals of Lutheranism (Hoffman, 2008, np). It is clear that the context of his lifetime during this period directly influenced his compositions that ran parallel to it, as “he exuded a joy of living and always placed his music in the service of God” (J.S. Bach: Life and Works, 2008, np).

Bibliography

Ambrose, P. (2016). BWV 245 Johannes-Passion. [online] Uvm.edu. Available at: http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/BWV245.html [Accessed 20 May 2016].

Bach, J. (1730). Short but Most Necessary Draft for a Well-Appointed Church Music. Bach-Dokumente. [online] Leipzig: J.S Bach, pp.1-4. Available at: http://www.cengage.com/music/book_content/049557273X_wrightSimms/assets/ITOW/7273X_40_ITOW.pdf [Accessed 20 May 2016].

Boyd, M. (2000). Bach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Burkholder, J., Grout, D. and Palisca, C. (2013). Johann Sebastian Bach. In: J. Burkholder, D. Grout and C. Palisca, ed., A History of Western Music, 9th ed. New York: W.W Norton & Company, pp.435-449.

Butt, J. (1991). Bach, Mass in B minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.77-93.

Chiapusso, J. (1968). Bach's world. Bloomington.

Gunter Hoke, H. (1975). Neue Studien zur Kunst der Fuge BWV 1080. Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, 17, pp.95-115.

Hoffman, W. (2008). Works of Other Composers performed by J.S. Bach. [online] Bach Cantatas Online. Available at: http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Other/Work-Perform.htm [Accessed 19 May 2016].

J.S. Bach: Life and Works. (2008). [DVD] Thomaskirche - St Thomas Church, Leipzig: Thomasshop.

British Library Online. (2009). Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). [online] Available at: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/musicmanu/bach/ [Accessed 19 May 2016].

Oron, A. (2013). Bach's Motets - BWV 225-231. [online] Bach Cantatas Online. Available at: http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV225-231.htm [Accessed 19 May 2016].

Philipp Emanuel Bach, C. and Friedrich Agricola, J. (1754). Nekrolog. In: Musikalische, 4th ed. Leipzig: Mizlerischer Bücherverlag, p.173.

Rathey, M. (2003). Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B Minor: The Greatest Artwork of All Times and All People.

Sartorius, M. (2014). Johann Sebastian Bach: a detailed informative biography. [online] Baroque Music. Available at: http://www.baroquemusic.org/bqxjsbach.html [Accessed 19 May 2016].

Spitta, P. (1951). Johann Sebastian Bach, his work and influence on the music of Germany, 1685-1750. London: Novello.

Stauffer, G. (2014). Why Bach Moves Us. [online] The New York Review of Books. Available at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/02/20/why-bach-moves-us/ [Accessed 19 May 2016].

Stauffer, G. (1997). Bach, the Mass in B minor. New York: Schirmer, p.48.

American Public Media. (2016). The Art of the Fugue. [online] Available at: http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/articles/artoffugue/unfinished.shtml [Accessed 19 May 2016].

Walker, K. (2016). 290 years ago: Bach becomes cantor of St. Thomas' Church | Music | DW.COM | 26.04.2013. [online] DW.COM. Available at: http://www.dw.com/en/290-years-ago-bach-becomes-cantor-of-st-thomas-church/a-16774935 [Accessed 20 May 2016].

Wolff, C. (1983). Each family. London: Macmillan.

Wolff, C. (1991). Bach. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Wolff, C. (2012). The world of the Bach cantatas. New York: Norton.

Wolff, C. (2002). Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. London: Oxford University Press.

A Report on Dr. Bjorn Heile’s Sound, Movement, Embodiment - Analysing Experimental Musical Theatre 27th October, 2016

Last week, we were greeted by Bjorn Heile of Glasgow University, where he discussed with us his paper “Sound, movement, embodiment - analysing experimental musical theatre”. The presentation was quite engaging, but I had some issues with it which I will explain at the end.

He opened by dissecting his title into section through which he would present his paper. With regards to sound and movement, we were presented with the notion that sound is the result of movement, and that musicians move their bodies to perform which is a key component of performance, and that we make sound producing gestures (excitation and modification, as Heile puts it). This notion of gestures was elaborated on in quite a fair amount of detail, and that there were many which he sees in performers: Communicative gestures (performer-performer or performer-perceiver), sound-facilitating gestures (something that artists Keith Jarrett, Ali Akbar Khan and Eric Clapton are known for), and sound-accompanying gestures, which include dancing, foot-tapping, air guitar playing etc. he noted that these ‘categories’ were not mutually exclusive to each other, stating that: Jarrets and Claptons histrionics might be sound facilitating or expressive and, therefore, communicative to an audience. Heile noted that listening is as much a part of experimental performance as the performance itself, stating that “perception likewise involves sensorimotor system, and that listening is not only mental decoding of acoustic signals, but bodily re-enactment of movement”.

When discussing the progression of these means, he identified that there are issues with encouraging these practices. He said that most music listening happens with speakers or headphones, and that a lot of music is electronically produced, meaning there are no observable movements to be made, and that many listeners have little experience of music-making. He discussed some potential ways of solving this issue (which contradict his argument to a degree), saying people have more experience than they think in terms of musical observation, such as watching x factor, seeing buskers on the street or attending concerts. He also says that sound-movement associations are “deeply embedded in cognitive apparatus”, or hardwired, into our heads, and that we don't depend on actual experiences with regards to music making, saying that ”in the natural world, sound is the result of movement, we instinctively react to sound, predator or prey”.

With regards to the physical practice of experimental musical theatre, he quoted himself in defining the practice (not narcissistic at all) saying “theatrical actions are created by music making (playing of musical instruments or other sounding objects, singing). This form needs to be distinguished from other types of musical theatre, such as opera and related genres, in which music accompanies theatre action”. He then went on and asked us to think about performance, and ask when is a musical performance more than a musical performance. To answer this, wanted to frame the context of the practice, and explained that manipulation of performance and the person of the performer causes a “disruption of the linear cause-and-effect relation between action and sound”.

While his overall arguments made sense, it was clear from the get-go that a lot of the research that Heile was quoting was his own, making it very hard to understand exactly where he was coming from as he got lost in his excitement of talking about his own discoveries. It is clear that he is breaking some ground in the area he is dedicated to, but some of the theoretical aspects of what he explains are a bit ‘blue-sky’. While I enjoyed his talk, I found it hard to follow in some respects, and (with all due respect to Heile) nonsensical in others.

An Audio Analysis of Kriti Telisi Rama 28th October, 2016

The performance of the piece ‘Kriti Telisi Rama’ that we were given is a bit of an oddity when compared to similar pieces which we have heard in class; while the provided piece retains the fundamental characteristics of a Kriti, it lacks any sort of vocal part, which in turn has made it quite difficult to distinguish just exactly what section we are listening to as each cycle passes by.

In terms of performance, the piece is again subject to standard Kriti characteristics and tropes. One of these, which has a prevailing presence here, is the use of improvisational techniques and variation. The performance does begin each starting phrase, or eduppu, with a melody line that does stay true to what is actually written as per the composition’s instructions. However, as the performers continue to play in cycles across the different lines of the Pallavi, Anupallavi and Caranam, you begin to hear slight inflections of improvisation as the time goes on, which eventually manifests itself as full cycles which sound completely different to one another due to (in some cases, heavy) variation and improvisation. This somewhat detaches the the performance away from the composition.

As it is common to feature improvisation within Karnatak music, there are names designated towards certain forms of improvisation and variation, such as alapana (unmetered melodic improvisation), niraval (variations on given lines within the Kriti), svara kalapana (rhythmic improvisation via sargam) and tani aadvarttanam (improvised drum). These are all present in this piece, as can be seen in the accompanying chart (albeit without technical definitions). Of all these, the features most prevalent in Telisi Rama (in my opinion) are niraval and tani aadvarttanam. Niraval can be heard right across the board (referring back to what I said earlier with regards to improvisational inflections), and really instills a notion within me that the instrumentalists find their ‘groove’ while riffing on this improvisational technique. It can be heard throughout the cycles, usually occurring not on the first or second, but on the third once the performer is comfortable and wants to ‘shake things up’. The Tani aadvarttanam is a feature that is always present in between the transitions from section to section, so it is present here by default, but the drum can be heard to have it’s own little improvisational phrases (again, as can be seen in the chart), moreso prevalent in the Pallavi.

When talking about improvisation, it is important not to ignore Sangathi, which is a technique more focused on variation in that it features the performer singing a different form of the given line, leading to a series of variations on the primary melody of the piece. It is quite evident from the end sections of the Anupallavi and the Caranam that this technique, despite not adhering to a voice, is present here. The ends of these sections (which I am assuming are instances of the Pallavi reprise) are heavy variations on the initial Pallavi melody, and set out to expand on the given composition, which it does successfully. The Sangathi here applies to the playing instruments, which vary so much on the Pallavi motif that they almost become indistinguishable apart from the identifiable opening notes (and the instance where one variation is played up a series of octaves).

On Simon Frith's Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music 1st November, 2016

Simon Frith, a British ethnomusicologist, compiled in 2007 a collection of his essays entitled “Taking Popular Music Seriously”, which offered a range of thought provoking insights towards the area and had a lot of implications on the development of musicology in terms of popular music. One of these essays, "Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music", sees Frith examine a question of value in terms of what these songs added to musical development. Also, he wanted to look at the way by which people asked these questions of judgement, examining the ways by which these individuals would shape the whole practise of listening to music through their sophist-esque inquiries.

The Value of Popular Music From a sociological perspective, it is worth noting that Frith believes that there is an artistic approach to constructing any aesthetic of popular music, seen in the opening, "serious music matters because it transcends social forces; popular music is aesthetically worthless because it is determined by them" (Frith, 2007, p257). All throughout his paper, Frith questions the point of origin with regards to specific social groups and subcultures and their attachments to specific types of music. To begin identifying a means of discovering this link, he begins to theorise that popular music preferences in relation to individuals, while pertaining to being products of socially constructed tastes, are also a key component in the establishment of what this ‘taste’ actually is. He goes on to argue against the idea that pop music has it’s existence based on the result of how commercially viable and successful that particular music is, saying "even if pop tastes are the effects of social conditioning and commercial manipulation, people still explain them to themselves in terms of value judgment" (Frith, 2007, p259).

Throughout his essay, Frith conveys this foothold on the idea that popular music is a kind of neo-marxist metaphysical tool which influences people to conform to a specific identity, something which Frith surmises as seeing music as defining "its own aesthetic standard" (Frith, 2007, p261). For Frith, it’s clear that pop music doesn’t just identify an individual’s taste, but that it creates it aswell. While discussing methods of gauging popularity, such as pop charts, he argues that "their use is always for the creation (rather than reflection) of taste communities” (Frith, 2007, p262), and later on, “Women's music, for example, is interesting not as music which somehow expresses 'women', but as music which seeks to define them" (Frith, 2007, p262).

With regards to experiencing pop music, Frith says that experiencing it is a matter of being in a specific position. He clearly outlines that popular music (the field) is more open to individual appropriation than any other form of cultural expression, but he still says that while being a function that allows for the creation of a personal identity, as stated above, pop music is still labelled as "out there" (Frith, 2007, p263), and as such creates an unreal, imaginary family of affiliated individuals around it with that allows people to be able to identify with each other through their shared musical tastes, "Other cultural forms - painting, literature, design - can articulate and show off shared values and pride, but only music can make you feel them” (Frith, 2007, p264).

Social Functions of Music As he begins to talk about the social functions of music, Frith provides us with 4 functions of this music which set out to explain in detail the ways by which these ‘value judgements’ mentioned above are made and handled. The initial function that Frith defines is a function of self definition, which he outlines is to create a place in society for the individual listener. According to Frith, there is a certain pleasure to be derived from listening to pop music, and that pleasure may very well be associated with the self identification, "with the music we like, with the performers of that music, with the other people who like it" (Frith, 2007, p264). To Frith, becoming a fan of a specific type of music is to be a part of a greater sense of self realisation which defines a characteristic of the listener that he/she can understand.

The second function Frith discusses is to provide "a way of managing the relationship between our public and private emotional life" (Frith, 2007, p265). Frith makes note that many songs under the branch of popular music are love songs, and he says that this is due to the fact that "people need them to give shape and voice to emotions that otherwise cannot be expressed without embarrassment or incoherence" (Frith, 2007, p265). While songs written about love might be a way of channelling emotional buildup or releasing emotional tension, Frith says that this too is a way of discovering ourselves akin to the first principle; "people do not idolize singers because they wish to be them but because these singers seem able, somehow, to make available their own feeling – it is as if we get to know ourselves via music" (Frith, 2007, p266).

The third function that Frith discusses is how music can be used as a tool to help shape, what he calls, popular memory, which directly affects the organisation of our sense of time. Frith theorises that music has a power which essentially enables the listener to ‘stop time’ while engaging with this music, "music in itself provides our most vivid experience of time passing" (Frith, 2007, p266). This is essentially labelling music as a port for nostalgia, which might ‘transport’ the listener to a timeless zone. Frith’s 4th function is the idea that "popular music is something possessed" by the listener (Frith, 2007, p267). Frith notes that "the intensity of this relationship between taste and self definition seems peculiar to popular music – it is 'possessable' in ways that other cultural forms (except, perhaps, sports teams) – are not" (Frith, 2007, p268), noting that each listener to a particular piece of music owns it in the respect that it has a certain function to each individual.

To Frith, aesthetics in popular music are those that explain these ‘value judgments’ in relation to these four functions as defined above, "in pop, transcendence marks not music's freedom from social forces but its patterning by them" (Frith, 2007, p268).

The Aesthetics of Popular Music The final subheading of "Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music" deals with the actual aesthetics of popular music. Frith looks at the reasons that have allowed pop-culture to become what is has, looking at its social functions through the 4 pillars that defined in the previous section.

Here, Frith looks at the ways by which the culture of the 20th century has appropriated musical tropes from those of African-American musics, “The most important (and remarkable) feature of Western popular music in the twentieth century has been its absorption of and into Afro-American forms and conventions” (Frith, 2007, p269). From there, he looks at the status that the voice has in modern popular music, examining the notion as to why we react to a particular singer's voice irrespective of whether we understand the song’s lyrics or not, and that says something of their narrative structure, “The tone of voice is more important in this context than the actual articulation of particular lyrics - which means, for example., that groups, like the Beatles, can take on a group voice” (Frith, 2007, p270).

He then discusses that popular music may be subject to to genre analysis and classification with respect to the different ways by which certain musics utilise a narrative structure to create patterns of self identification, making it far easier for songwriters be able to express their different emotions in song, “ As listeners we are drawn into a certain sort of reality: this is what it is like to live in America, this is what it is like to love or hurt. The resulting music is the pop equivalent of film theorists' 'classic realist text'. It has the same effect of persuading us that this is how things really are - realism inevitably means a non-romantic account of social life, and a highly romantic account of human nature” (Frith, 2007, p271)

For Frith, it is clear to see that popular music has been, for the past 50 years, a keystone in the research he has conducted, and an effective way by which we learn to understand ourselves as human subjects. Through Frith, we learn that music has the ability to place us in society and subconsciously influence us to do things, perhaps averting social pillars in the process. As Frith says, "pop tastes do not just derive from our socially constructed identities; they also help to shape them" (Frith, 2007, p273).

Bibliography

Frith, S. (2007). Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music. In: S. Frith, ed., Taking Popular Music Seriously, 1st ed. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing.

A Report on Dr Bianca Temes’ Romanian Folklore: Hidden Streams in the Music of Ligeti and Kurtag 2nd November, 2016

Last week we were presented a talk on (what was initially thought to be just) Ligeti’s Romanian concerto. Entitled Romanian Folklore: Hidden Streams in the Music of Ligeti and Kurtag, Bianca Temes, of the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy at Cluj-Napoca, began to talk first about Ligeti in her short presentation, “Ligeti’s Romanian Concerto: From wax cylinders to symphony orchestra”.

I entered just as Bianca was discussing Ligeti and his only opera, Le Grand Macabre. She attempted to explain to us that there is a particular bassoon line contained within a specific part of the opera’s orchestration that actually mimics/parodies a line that is sung in a Romanian Easter mass score. We as a class were actually unable to pinpoint this out, but she explained that this was a result of her actually coming from the country and knowing it in far greater detail than we would after one hearing.

She then went on to describe just how Ligeti treated the history of music (in relation to his somewhat unorthodox methods of composition), quoting Ligeti in a great line “if you take a piece of foie gras and you trample it onto the carpet until it disappears, thats how I treat the history of music”, something which Harry White made a point out of as being a great description of how he approached his methods of composition.

Following up on this, we were shown that there was a bit of a renaissance in terms of Romanian folk music across the 1980s up to the 2000s, and Ligeti was a part of this, adding his own unique touches to it. 1990,91 & 94, Ligeti ‘rearranged’ (or rather, rejigged) arrangements by use of “verbal sketches” to add his own mark to them, which in turn were made to make them sound less like professional orchestrations and more like folk musics. These included a violin concero, a series of hamburgisches konzerts and viola sonatas. This, as Bianca put it, allowed Ligeti to draw ‘new acoustic geographies’ with regards to this folk music. She notes that this inspiration came from Ligeti’s own personal experiences in Bucharest during the 1950’s (as Ligeti was Hungarian, his inspiration would not have come from his own country) where he would transcribe and edit indigenous folk music which was recorded on wax cylinders.

It was from here on that Bianca made a concerted effort to focus more on György Kurtág (in more detail than was expected). The focus here was not on the folk music as such, but more on the composition of the Romanian ‘colinda’, or carol. She spoke highly of the apparent “illustrative power” of Kurtag’s music, emphasising his ability to weave certain aspects of these colinda in and out of more conventional orchestrations (she mentioned and played a specific Tenor aria).

She goes on to talk about how his compositions contain ‘inverted signs and messages’, focusing specifically on one colinda that focused on a weaver names Ana, and how the music corresponded with the lyrics in a pseudo form of word painting, noting horses slowing down and the ‘sick’ sun as focal points for this analysis.

While her talk was very interesting, I think I speak for the whole class when I say we were all expecting much more of an emphasis on Ligeti (if it wasn’t entirely obvious from this write up, I tuned out a bit during the talk on Kurtag). The talk was also interrupted quite a bit in terms of technical errors, which also provoked us to disengage a bit from the content. However, there were some fun little anecdotes that made it more interesting than not. I’d love to do a bit more research into Ligeti as a result.

A Report on Áine Mangaoang’s Beyoncé, Mapps and Prison: Music as Tourism, Multimodal, and Punishment 10th November, 2016

This week’s seminar saw Aine Mangaoang of the University of Oslo discuss methods of popular music research in her paper, Beyoncé, Mapps and Prison: Music as tourism, multimodal, and punishment.

She began by showing us a video of prisoners figure dancing to Michael Jackson, which went viral online, and which she says inspired rehabilitation programs inside prison systems around the world. Before expanding on this, she mentioned the medieval phrase ‘playing on the pillory’ (focusing on an Image of man in cage playing an instrument, contained in a section of a larger painting). She detailed that this exercise, called poena medicinalis, was used to humiliate prisoners, before the judicial system was introduced. Quoting Foucault, she explained that changes in penal history served ‘not to punish less, but to punish better’, which is an interesting insight when you look at how modern prisons are run from a largely ‘work-force’-esque point of view.

She went back to the ‘prison performance’ and how it connects with this. As a result of the virality of the video, the prison in question was turned into a tourist site, hosting a live concert every month for based on american pop songs. This gave rise to a convergence of leisure and imprisonment, where merchandise was created and sold, photos could be taken with inmates (which is questionably a breach of prison conduct), essentially turning the whole thing into a global phenomenon. She notes that, interestingly, there is more of this type of ‘rehab’ in place across prisons worldwide. She notes that prison inmates at a Malawi facility actually produced an album that was nominated for a grammy. This, if anything, proves that they invested a large amount of effort into the exercise which suggests that, as a form of rehabilitation, is working well.

Turning her focus towards multimodal communication, she first showed us a video of a couple in a car with ‘Halo’ by beyonce playing in background. What was interesting to note is that the wording was done through sign language, and as a result went viral in 2014 and became the first of many to follow it. She notes that having songs covered in this manner by Beyoncé in particular has become a subculture of sorts, probably a result of her mass appeal.

She outlines the obvious appeal of this, noting that there is a deaf population size of less than 10% who have relatives who are also deaf. This offers the families of the remaining 90%+ an incentivised way to learn sign language that’s easy-to-access. However, the negativity surrounding the idea is high as a result of this; as many people watch these videos to learn, and as a result of there being no moderation on how they’re produced, they garnered a lot of backlash for being a ‘mongrel’ or partially correct version of sign language, in that certain words were wrong or misunderstood, or just completely incorrect. What’s more interesting is that the creators of the videos won a lot of awards for bridging gaps between communities, and were offered funding to create more. In my own opinion, I think that the idea of them being funded brings with it an assumption that they would be regulated by a team of experts in the field.

Finally, talking about music in relation to tourism, she actually turned her focus towards Ireland, which she notes underwent massive increase in tourism growth to Ireland from 2008 to now, adding an extra 1 million visitors per year.

Her discussion lies in the reasons why tourists find Ireland an attractive destination. She points out the obvious, saying Ireland’s own regional music is a massive reason for tourism, but she backs it up with the interesting statistic that 83% of overseas holidaymakers seek out music in Ireland, and that listening to music in a pub is the no.1 experience that international visitors seek out. It should come as no surprise really, but when you see the statistic in front of you it makes you think just how close to the Irish stereotype tourists want to see over here.

She talks then about how we can improve the experience for tourists, looking at music from the points of view from fans, musicians and professionals. She examines the options relating to music tourism in dublin up to 1996, which were very bare, only featuring a U2 exhibit, the rock’n’stroll trail, rock’n’roll museum and U2 walking tours. I agree with her when she says that the restrictive nature of early closing times for music venues in Dublin, in comparison with other major cities, curbs the development of music. She then distributed a map that her organisation had created, examining the popular musical destinations in Dublin that tourists might not be aware of.

This seminar, I found, was the most engaging of the 4 we’ve had so far. I found the research that Aine is doing within the prisons to be very interesting, to the point where I’d be tempted to contact her and do some work in the area myself. I also loved her little anecdotes towards the end of the lecture, that “music is not the centre of everything, and is more than often a byproduct of something else”.

Ethnography & Popular Music Research 17th November, 2016

It is not a fallacy to say that how we research popular music has been augmented by the availability of conclusive research that has been carried out from an ethnographic front. Ethnographies not only provide insights into a particular culture at a particular time (allowing us to examine how and why something is popular in that cultural sector), but when condensed and compared they might also offer insights into a formulaic set of events that lead to the popularisation of a type of music.

A perfect example of this type of research can be seen in ethnomusicologist Barry Shank’s academic investigation of the Austin music scene, seen in his 1994 book Dissonant Identities. The ethnography, which sees him delve headfirst into the field, accounts his actions in leading to an a sense of ‘evolving’ research which is reflected in his publication (the book two very different halves, initially written from a personal perspective, then changing to an academic, analytical standpoint which provokes him to alter his research methodology as he saw fit, ). The result of this type of research gave rise to an ambitious ethnography, featuring a remarkable scope and sense of depth with regards to the popular music of the Texas culture, enabling him to trace the roots of the Texan music scene within Austin, from the origins of the Honky Tonks right through to the emergence of “Austin Punk”.

The downside to this form of research is the looming temptation to becoming completely encapsulated by the culture’s draw, leading to potential bias. Again turning to Shank, he details in the preface of his book that he wanted to integrate himself with the music scene to gain a greater set of insights into the music of the culture by attempting to act an active participant rather than a voyeur to attain a balance of "dialectic of distance and intimacy" (Shank, 1994, pp. xii). The same might be said with regards to ethnomusicologist Steven Friedson, who is his book Remains of Ritual details how he often gets lost in what he’s doing, perhaps deviating too much away from the purpose of the book and focusing on the culture surrounding him (a state he describes as ‘gone native’). Despite this, the benefits or directly engaging with a culture as opposed to merely reading about them offers academic investigation on a different level, providing greater insights into the musicology, semiotics, criticism, and history of a culture’s popular music.

Works Cited;

Friedson, S. (2009). Remains of ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shank, B. (1994). Dissonant identities. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.

Personal Reflections on Entrepreneurial Endeavour 18th November, 2016

A note to Fergal - In a true entrepreneurial fashion, I went down an unconventional path of doing this report. I used a dictation technology to record my answers (i.e, this is transcribed from my actual voice as opposed to a traditionally typed essay). With that in mind, I apologise if any of the phrasing is slightly off!

What is an entrepreneur? Before I started this course, if you have asked me that question, I probably would have said just another businessman. But to tell the truth, this course opened me up to so much more in terms of what exactly that term means; somebody who thinks differently, and approaches things differently, someone who doesn't merely come up with different ideas in a workplace. They are people who think outside the box, and this is something that we were tasked with appropriating. This happened slowly, but could be seen developing more and more evidently as we progressed through the weeks. The first week, we were given a couple of pieces of Lego to play with. What I had thought was initially an exercise to see who could make the best duck out of a set of Lego pieces turned out to be an exercise that actually showed us just tell many different ways the way they were making a duck (something that wasn’t said until after work). This exercise immediately showed me just help narrow I was thinking, because I was more focused on how I would actually come up with the best idea, as opposed to considering other ideas. And coming off the back of the last 8 weeks, it's clear that the role of an entrepreneur is the opposite of that. The first step in doing this came through one of the first things were were introduced to which was to ideate, to come up with many different solutions to a problem, something that I'll mention again later on.

To be asked then what is the role of an entrepreneur and entrepreneurial activity in Society? It kind of carries over that idea of ideation - on the role of an entrepreneur, it isn't necessarily to focus on what's going to make money, and that's something else that I was told since I started doing this course, that money making is kind of the tertiary aim in terms of what we're trying to do. The role of an entrepreneur is to identify first the problems existing in society, then to come up with a set of solutions, then to put them to forward to your customer market, bring them back and condense the information and customers ideas, then go back out ask more questions and continue to refine what your idea it is until you've come up with a solution (maybe more than one solution) that actually solve that problem, one that you can then take to market. So entrepreneurial activity in society serves to improve society itself, I would say.

What types of entrepreneur are there? That’s a little strange of a question...I can't actually think of more than one type of entrepreneur in a definitive sense, but there may be different types of entrepreneur in respect to what they actually think and how they approach things, or maybe it's just a case that they focus on different solutions to different problems. But then to focus on that would take away from the idea of entrepreneurship, because you're not focusing on the wider aspect of things, you're focusing on a single problem. So taking the first thing I said there; it could be the case where we see ‘open’ and ‘closed’ entrepreneurs, and I think Fergal touched on this slightly earlier on in the course, where he might have said that ‘open’ entrepreneurs think outside the box as I was saying there previously, whereas close minded entrepreneurs would have thought more along the lines of what I would have been thinking initially when I started off on the course where I'd be focusing on one thing, and that would more be a result of my personal engagement with things as opposed to thinking about things from a broader perspective. To think about what type of entrepreneur I am - what I am now is a stark contrast to what I was starting off. Again, as I said at the start when I was focused on making the best duck with the Lego pieces we were given, I was very narrow minded and I was very focused on one goal. But since then I feel this course has helped me a lot in terms of how I think about things and approach them, and this was greatly helped through the weekends that we had in the Guinness centre, as we were told how to approach to these things from an observational point of view. This observation gave rise to the discovery of key factors in solving problems, such as the habits of people in places, and it gave us a broader sense of the problems that need to be solved in society. So to look at myself now, I would call myself a more open entrepreneur, and the course definitely brought that out of me.

To ask me what the characteristics skills and traits that are necessary to be an entrepreneur is basically asking me to list off the things that have been drawn out of me over the last 9 to 10 weeks. I know I keep referring back to it, but again looking at the situation with the Lego pieces and the duck - I was very focused again on the one thing. I wasn’t open at all, and I didn't look around me to see what other people were doing. I was focused on my design, and I was convinced that my design was the best design (which of course couldn't be right because everybody has their own opinions on how to make something like that, as long as it works there is no right or wrong answer). So looking at that situation and how I deal with things now, post course, the characteristics that I would display are observation, I listen a lot more, I focus on problems that need to be solved (and that's again done through observation) and I feel much more engaged in what I'm doing because I go out and interact with people more. It's been a great confidence boost in doing what we did on the weekends, in particular the ideation games, which have definitely open my mind up. So I'm more aware of the many different solutions that can present themselves to the problems that we see in everyday life.

So, having all these skills is fantastic, but to be using them on your own is a bit of a moot point. That's why it was so important and so beneficial to work as groups, as we did quite often it during the module. To describe my experience working in teams, the first thing I'd save is that it was actually a great thing to have other people to bounce ideas off; even though we develop the skills where we’re all more open-minded and more observant, it's still very easy to slip back into a situation where you think one idea that you might have (looking at a problem) is going to be the best thing since sliced bread. But to have the opinions of all the people around you is very helpful, and they ensure that situations like that don't happen as often as they would. Focusing there on the last teams that we were put into for our final pitch - I was brought into a team where food was the primary focus of the problem that we were trying to solve and immediately one of the things I thought of was a service that we could provide to workers where we would deliver meals to the place of work that they could collect on the way home. While the idea was a viable one for the project, a better idea was sparked off that one by one of my teammates, which would result then in being the final idea that we went with (which was Feed Me, the app that enables people locally to post meals onto JustEat style app which you can buy into on your way home from work, [seen to the left]). Once we had that idea, I found it was so much more helpful to have a team of people working to further refine the idea than it would have been by myself. As a person, before the module, I would have been very independent in terms of how I operated. I felt very similar approaching some of the challenges that required us to be a team, but once we had broken the ice, I found it to be such a relief to have the work spread around a group of five people my team members in general were very cooperative and very nice people, and it was a pleasure working with them.

When working on ideas, one of the things that we had constant issues with was trying to think of an idea before looking at the problem that needed to be solved. However, as the course went on it became a lot easier to ideate and focus ideas once we actually had this problem to be solved. Returning again to the first weekend that we spent in the Guinness centre, we were tasked with going out into the field and finding problems that need to be solved without looking at solutions that could potentially solve the problems. This was nailed into us constantly over the course of the module, that it's so crucial that we focus on the problem first, something that carried all the way through to the end. Once we were told once we had the problem, it was a lot easier to think of ways to solve it, and this was again evident on that first weekend when we were sent out to survey people over their habits with regards to eating fish. Once we had the problems, it was a lot easier to think of the solution and it wasn't even just one solution but many solutions presented themselves (as a matter of fact nearly everybody had an individual solution), so that's the first thing that needed to be addressed.

The second thing was this whole idea of mix and match which, again, was used quite early on in the module. In fact, it was the first echallenge that we were given, where we had to combine two things and create a product out of them. While this might seem seem like a simple thing, it was actually quite difficult initially, but once the creative juices get flowing it was a lot easier to think of new innovations simply by joining two concepts together that already existed, even if one of those things already solved a problem.For instance, one of the things I came up with was combining an app controlled drone with a pint glass. These were represented as icons on the echallenge screen (as a plane and a pint glass), but from that I was able to come up with a solution to a problem of convenience (this system would have allowed people to order via the app and the drone would deliver your pint glass to you full of whatever drink you want). So it's things like that ideation game that allowed us to again open our minds a lot more and come up with new and exciting prospects.

So - getting onto the idea of validating what we thought to be the solutions to the problems with the customers. Again focusing on the first weekend spent in the Guinness centre, where we went out trying to discover the problems associated with fish preparation; this particular situation gave rise to a lot of things that we would have came up with initially anyway, but having asked around 10 people with the group I was in a lot gave rise to a lot of small things that we wouldn't have thought out of, varying from the smell of an area after preparing fish, to sifting out bones when preparing fish fillets, stuff like that. While we didn't actually get a chance to go out and speak about what solutions we might have had to the public, it certainly gave us a significant amount of insight into the whole process, which was key when he came to actually doing that. So when it came to the final pitch project, we began to go out and start surveying people with regards to food problems, then came back and gathered these problems together, then went back out to the public again with ideas we might have come up with, all the while refining these ideas through things that popped up while further investigating issues with the public. We were finally able to get a foothold in something that started to shape up as a viable product in the long term, and as I said above, this eventually manifested itself as the application that we eventually pitched in the final presentation. In contrast to the way I initially approached everything, it was interesting to hear the customer tell me that I was actually onto something this time around as opposed to me thinking that I was right in my own mind which added a sense of validation to the whole exercise, especially after all of the work that we had to carried out in trying to ensure that we came up with something that actually served the public as opposed to going on a hunch (which would have been characteristic of that boxed off type of personality I mentioned above).

Talking about more about this project - obviously as it was our final project, we would employ all of the skills that we had used and developed through the module up to that point, which included our newfound usage of the business model canvas. Our group wasn't entirely convinced by the whole idea of the business model canvas, but it certainly provided a loose mainframe by which we could actually organise ourselves and structure what we were doing;

focusing first on the problem, moving on to the development of ideas and solutions, trying to come up with a minimum viable product and then as I said already, focusing on the financial aspect of it as a finality. During the second weekend spend in UCD, we were able to loosely structure our business mainframe on this business model canvas (using quite a lot of Fergal’s trademarked sticky notes) which helped give us a sense as to what we needed to do if we went ahead with the business.

When It came to actually presenting our pitch, we had accrued enough knowledge and developed enough confidence in presenting which made it a lot easier for us to fire our ideas to the ‘panel’. Our presentation included a functioning prototype of the application, as well as enough background research, statistical information and future planning ideas (which I believe helped us to do quite well on the day). This was helped by a comedic yet informative marketing video we filmed that accompanied the presentation, which went down well with the rest of the class.

The Early Days of the Troubadours 25th April, 2017

The beginnings of the early 13th century served as a golden age for the Troubadours; the first few decades were both stable and prosperous for them and their work. While at the time, Paris was the center of new musical developments, despite many art de trobar practitioners holding ecclesiastical ties, troubadour song hadn’t much to do with northern innovations surrounding polyphonic sacred music (the exact relationship between the songs of the troubadours and products of the Aquitanian clerics remains an open question, as few troubadour melodies of the period survive).

The troubadours, instead, kept South and East in the Midi region, around Aquitaine, Perigord, Limousin, Auvergne, Gascony, places where the art of the troubadours developed, and, halfway through the 12th century, Languedoc and further East. Many were well off, owning property or businesses, with some even being of minor nobility. Those who had no independent means found still found patronage, even abroad in Italy and Iberian regions Aragon, Castile and others.

Around this time, battles were being fought for control over these territories that would affect the troubadours. The French monarchy rose to power, leading to campaigns to conquer troubadour-occupied territories which affected their work output, leading to them suffering in terms of quality and quantity over output of their work.

As mentioned already some troubadours had ecclesiastical ties, so it shouldn’t be surprising that several troubadours participated in the holy crusades during the 12th and 13th centuries, which involved most of the important rulers of Europe at the time. Prior to the 3rd crusade following the fall of Jerusalem, troubadours added their voices to the call to arms for its liberation.

By the 12th century, the clerical establishment of the midi lost much of its moral authority and was losing its foothold. Cynical and libertarian views on religion led to a hostile, cathartic attitude towards clerical practice which spread through Occitania throughout the 12th Century. Troubadours, given their participation during the crusades, represented papal interference, and as a side effect Pope Innocent 3rd made known troubadour Folquet de Marshala bishop of Toulouse as part of an intervention to replace certain bishops in the region. He helped establish the Order of Friars Preachers in Toulouse and, following the treaty of Paris, carried out inquisitions and persecutions to help quell the ‘heresy’.

Following this, troubadours had little in terms of patronage, and suffered a decline in activity. The second half of the 13th century saw attempts to preserve the tradition through grammars, rhyme dictionaries and poetry, but they never reached the heights they had achieved prior.

Melodies of the troubadours make up one of the earliest preserved repertories of vernacular music with 315 discrete musical settings and 246 poems surviving.

Naming troubadours is a hard task, with many using senhals (or pseudonyms). Vidaz and Razos, short biographies and contextual explanations, help with this identification, although these can be misleading or fantasied. She notes that of the 460 names troubadours, the work of only 42 are extant. Of these she includes details on poignant first, second, third and fourth and final generation of troubadours who would take another half hour to discuss, but particularly key composers worth researching include Guilhem de Peitieu, earliest known troubadour, Count of Poitier and Duke of Aquitaine, Benart de Ventadorn one of the most celebrated troubadours of his day and viscount of Ventadorn, golden age composer Folquet de Marshela who, as mentioned already, was made bishop of Toulouse, Raimon de Miraval who belonged to a family of minor lords, and Piere Cardenal, also a member of a minor noble family and who was initially destined for an ecclesiastical post, but eventually veered toward vernacular poetry.

The troubadours were obviously well-travelled, given their peripatetic nature. To some degree, all were involved with important figures of their time. Many were extraordinary, prolific and creative, exploring genres and structures through principles of prosody, while others followed the beaten track of conventional composition. They were a non-uniform group of artists that would be a breath of fresh air in today’s world.