In the wars of southern Iberia in the late Middle Ages, urban sites played an especially important role. As centers of economic activity, defensive fortification and political power, cities were of course critical strategic targets for Castilians and Granadans fighting in the hoy wars of Andalucía. Beyond such concrete military qualities, though, the cities of Andalucía also carried significant cultural and social meaning as centers of chivalric memory and meaning. The leading knights of Andalucía in the fifteenth century thought of particular cities as being especially associated with the martial valor and accomplishments of themselves, their family and their ancestors and, as such, cities such as Gibraltar, Alhama and Cardela became conceptual receptacles of chivalric honor. Knights not only sought to conquer cities which had special meaning for the honor of their families, but also defined themselves and their martial worth partly through their experience fighting for and conquering the cities of Iberian Islam. This article will examine the conquest of several cities of Andalucía from the perspective of the noble Guzmán family and from the self-fashioning of Rodrigo Ponce de León, one of the premier knights of his age. In doing so, it will emphasize the ways in which chivalric memory transformed urban spaces into nodes of personal and familial honor.

Juan de Guzmán, duke of Medina Sidonia, hovered before the promise of indescribable glory and honor in August of 1462. Castilian troops were about to capture the city of Gibraltar from the Muslim enemy once and for all and for Juan de Guzmán this was more than simply the Christian reconquest of Muslim territory.

The priest appeared the next morning for his lesson as usual; he pronounced himself satisfied with Franziska's translation and was amused by her horror at the content of the ballad. At the same time, he used it as an occasion to play the role of literary historian: the tale of Barcsai, he explained, had been a favorite ballad since olden times, and its subject was no more gruesome than many others. Such was the prerogative of ballads, at least in Hungary. There was scarcely a single old folksong that did not include unfaithfulness and betrayal, for songs were a reflection of life. But popular sentiment demanded that these should be followed by expiation, and indeed, was quite firm on this point, usually allowing only two choices: being walled up alive or set on fire. The latter was preferred, though, as it was more vivid and lively.

Thus the conversation flowed, and its facetiousness had quite banished the terrors of the ballad from her mind by the end of the lesson, when the count picked her up to go for a drive.

These drives, mostly into the mountains, but sometimes round the northern inlets of the lake, were Franziska's special joy, not surprisingly. Here was where the count was at his most talkative, as he chatted about his childhood and youth, of his brotherly love for Countess Judith, and how beautiful and ravishing she had once been, until old Gundolskirchen, a dull Styrian who might have been born into the world with riding boots on, had replaced her native Magyar grace with German dignity, or in plain language, ponderousness; the church then did the rest.

The chapter gives a brief outline of a variety of random processes associated with networks. It begins with a short introduction to properties of finite Markov chains, including an ergodic theorem and the notion of reversibility, that are useful for understanding networks. Next, the simple vertex random walk is discussed, together with the random walk with restart. The non-backtracking random walk is also introduced, as are some random walks on sets of networks, such as the switching chain and Glauber dynamics. The chapter concludes with a discussion of epidemic models, and of some dynamical systems, such as opinion formation models, on networks.

Women working in the music industry face limitations in opportunity, a lack of support, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment and assault, as well as the persistent issue of unequal pay in a sector dominated by self-employment and gendered power imbalances. Despite increases in representation, these issues are endemic and are intensified for women faced with intersectional barriers, particularly racial discrimination.

Despite the urgency of these issues alongside significant evidence and recommendations laid out in the 2024 Misogyny in music report, the UK Government rejected all recommendations to protect and support women in the music industry. In relation to the wider arts sector in Ireland, the Irish Theatre Institute report launched in October 2021 also highlighted the level of change needed across the arts, with 70% of practitioners having experienced harmful behaviour. In July 2024, Safe to Create published their AMPLIFY report, which evidenced that of more than 500 disabled, LGBTQIA+, and ethnically diverse artists and arts workers involved in the music, film, theatre, literature, visual arts, and other arts scenes in Ireland:

respondents said they had experienced racial micro-aggressions, and a further 40% indicated they had experienced racial discrimination in their workplaces.

Further findings from Safe to Create's report highlighted that “56% of disabled respondents have been excluded from the workplace due to a lack of care/accommodations/ableist attitudes to their disability”.

The two concerts reviewed here were given in the Salle Érard on 21 March and 13 April 1841.

No one had ever dared put on these kinds of concert in Paris, and at such a price; to wit, seven pieces by Liszt filled the whole programme, with tickets at twenty francs. It makes one tremble! Many people found this project unseemly, extravagant, overweening! But the public came, not once but twice, and with even more eagerness the second time than the first. It found the seven pieces short, to the point of encoring one and demanding another which was not in the printed programme. His marvellous talent casts such a spell on people who are not particularly musical, his prestige is so great, he charms, he dazzles, he sweeps along with such grace, brilliance, and energy, that even those artists whose attitudes are almost hostile to him nevertheless go to hear him, applauding him with all their might, leaving the hall convinced of his vast superiority, regaining their settled opposition two hours later, and rushing again to hear him and applaud at the next opportunity.

It would certainly be pointless to look to an analysis of mechanical procedures for the secret of his power; even if in the domain of difficulty and the astonishment he engenders by his victories over it, Liszt is truly unrivalled, it seems obvious that the greatest power does not lie there. I find it in an intelligence that one might call divinatory, in an exquisite sensitivity, carried sometimes to excess, and which, if not kept under control, can, it's true, damage the rigorous performance of certain works which merely demand firm, broad-based, rectilinear execution, but which is also unique in lifting the artist to the heights of great, poetically inspired works.

D.H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad – along with the broader spectrum of early twentieth-century European literature – have profoundly influenced the literary oeuvre of Ngugi wa Thiong’o. This influence is not unexpected, considering that Ngugi’s exposure to written literature during his formative years within the context of colonial Kenya led him to perceive it predominantly as fiction authored by Europeans or individuals of European descent – and predominantly articulated in the English language. The focus of this chapter is on Ngugi’s literary works that, following Gérard Genette’s theory of ‘transtextuality’, are hypertexts of early twentieth-century European hypotexts. It is demonstrated that these hypotexts serve as templates that were occasionally adhered to with considerable fidelity, while at other times, they were subject to substantial reworking. Even as Ngugi broadened the array of hypotextual sources for his literary compositions by engaging with non-European literary traditions in the latter part of his career, he did not forfeit the aesthetic opportunities that early twentieth-century European fiction and narrative construction methodologies provided him in his endeavour to tell his stories.

INTRODUCTION

The trial of Janet Sawyer took place in 1658, during the English military occupation of Scotland. Sawyer was a middle-aged woman in Ayr, married to John McAdam. Her husband was a messenger, and had stables. The years 1658 and 1659 saw a considerable number of witchcraft trials in Scotland, with a total of eighty-two in 1658 and 100 in 1659. Several of the alleged witches came from parishes in the south and west of Scotland. Whereas the bulk of Scottish witchcraft trials took place in the south-eastern part of the country, the trials of Sawyer and some others took place in Ayr, on the west coast. Circuit courts played an important role in carrying through the trials.

Both Janet Sawyer and her husband had previously been mentioned in the Ayr kirk session minutes in December 1643. They were accused of flyting (quarrelling), and her husband was accused of abusing his spouse. Both had previously been privately admonished by the kirk session. They both confessed, and were publicly admonished to behave better. Then, in January 1647, Sawyer was again brought before the kirk session, this time accused of slandering another woman for theft and harlotry. She denied the accusation, and a group of five elders were appointed to investigate the case and report.

Janet Sawyer was first accused of witchcraft by another witch, Helen Garven. She was in prison in Ayr on 7 October 1651 together with three other women: Janet Crawford, Janet Sloan and Elizabeth Cunningham. This is briefly mentioned in the records of Ayr burgh council. Pricking was used to provide circumstantial evidence.

However, no witchcraft trials were held in 1651, which was a time of warfare and political turmoil. The English army invaded Scotland in 1650, and had largely completed its conquest by the end of 1651.

As explained in the introduction to volume 3, p. li, from the 1860s acts of special worship became more diverse. As these ceased to be largely ordered by the state and were increasingly left to decision by the churches, the leaders of the established churches began to appoint various types of special services and prayers. In some cases, these calls to prayer continued to be appeals to the whole community on issues of general national or international significance – the ‘national prayers’ which are the subject of this edition. Other appeals were for causes more specific to the churches themselves and in practice were directed towards those who regularly attended church services. This second type of special worship is designated here as ‘church prayers’. These ‘church prayers’ were of two types, annual and particular. Given their more limited purposes, no texts or commentaries are provided for these ‘church prayers’, but some further explanation may be helpful.

It should be emphasized that the distinction between ‘national prayers’ and ‘church prayers’ is an editorial decision. The distinction is sometimes fine, and it is not one that was necessarily intended or that would have been recognized by contemporaries. An indication of the fine differences is the commemoration of centenaries or semicentenaries of major events in the history of the churches, for example the 400th anniversaries in 1883 of Luther's birth and in 1938 of the English bible.

Placide-Alexandre-Guillaume Poultier (1814–87) was a French tenor at the Opéra from 1841, when he took over the role of Arnold in Guillaume Tell on 4 October, to 1851. He was particularly successful in Halévy's La Juive and in Auber's La Muette de Portici.

The arrival of a new tenor on the stage of the Opéra is an event whose musical importance becomes greater by the day. It's easy indeed to think ahead to a time not so far in the future when the staging of most of the great works in the repertoire will be impossible unless some young singer, with talent and a voice, with a figure and a voice, with sensitivity and a voice, with energy and fire and a voice, comes to the aid of the theatre, the composers, and the public – who after all have a stake in this, even if in these areas they seem sometimes to have gone into retirement. We need a tenor made for the music and not a virtuoso for whom the music must be made: an artist who sings his roles and can avoid accommodating them to the needs of his organ. We need a tenor whose strong, vibrant, beautiful chest voice goes from at least e to b′ flat (an octave and a half), whose low notes are truly acceptable and sonorous, whose head notes are pure and achieved without effort, who can sing at speed without losing energy, and can hold a g′ and even an a′ without fear in an Andante.

The appearance of this volume within Irish Musical Studies gives me more joy than I can say. Although I have been closely engaged with the series for almost thirty-five years, indeed since its inception under the imprint of Irish Academic Press in 1990, this is the first occasion on which a book entirely of my own making has featured among its contents. The series itself has been a going concern (so to speak) for most of my academic career, thanks in no small measure to my fellow general editors, Professor Gerard Gillen, and more recently, Professor Lorraine Byrne Bodley, who joined me as series editor when Irish Musical Studies transferred to The Boydell Press in 2021. My gratitude to Gerard and Lorraine is heartfelt and lifelong on this account (among much else), but I also owe profound thanks to the first publisher of the series, the late Michael Adams, as well as to his colleagues in Irish Academic Press and Four Courts Press, under whose imprint the series appeared from 1996 until 2020. Simply to name Michael in this way is to remember a cherished friend whose work on behalf of Irish studies generally was both pioneering and immense. And as for his ‘stevedores in Malpas Street’, as Toby Barnard once memorably characterised them, my indebtedness most especially to Martin Fanning, Martin Healy and Anthony Tierney for their expertise, wise counsel and sheer kindness over the years will never be forgotten by me.

Ngũgĩ’s theatrical activism in Kamĩrĩĩthũ in the 1970s and 1980s was a kind of homecoming. His conscription into theatre activities in the village was a homecoming to his adopted home, and to an epistemological one where theatre was linked to practical and historical concerns articulated by the underprivileged subjects of his earlier writing. Writing plays in Gĩkũyũ enabled him to reach his ideal audience, the workers and peasants who could not read his works written in English. Their lives embodied the broken promises of independence, concretised in community-building. A repoliticised gitiiro dance sequence evokes the joining of hands that would deliver a second liberation. Joining the community theatre project was a kind of homecoming to the storytelling and theatrical performances of his youth. His detention for theatrical activism connected him to a long tradition of community activists who used art to advance social and political causes. In turn, Kamĩrĩĩthũ needed Ngũgĩ to thrive. The theatre of learning and its investment in praxis enabled the community to read their embodied material conditions and act upon them, thus energising the Kamĩrĩĩthũ people’s rallying cry that their sons and daughters who were inspired by anti-colonial nationalism to enter the theatre of war in the 1950s will return home in triumph over colonial and neo-colonial forces.

The concert, which took place on 4 May 1844, included Liszt playing a concerto by Weber, his own Réminiscences de Don Juan (Mozart's Don Giovanni), and his transcription of ‘Un Bal’ from Symphonie fantastique. The orchestra played the overtures Le Carnaval romain and Les Francs-juges, and the symphony Harold en Italie. The concert ended with Liszt and Döhler playing Liszt's Hexaméron, variations on the duet ‘Suoni la tromba!’ (‘Sound the trumpet!’) from Bellini's I puritani. Berlioz reported to his sister Nancy Pal on 19 May that ‘Liszt was marvellous, and the takings (12,000 francs) astonishing’. At the end of the article, by way of thanking them, Berlioz singled out orchestral players whose work he especially appreciated.

I can't abide that man! He's one of the weirdest characters, one of the most unlovable people, one of the most absurd intelligences anybody could meet in this world of ours, so lacking as it is in decent folk, happy beings and cheerful spirits. And it's yet it is I who have been chosen to write about him. – ‘Go on! Go on!’ I’m told, ‘it’ll be acceptable to one person and disagreeable to another, and all the more original because you both have the same name. People will think he's reviewed his own concert, there’ll be complaints and arguments, it's exactly what's needed’. All very fine and generous! So all it needs is for me to speak enthusiastically about it in order to wreck it and cover it with ridicule. But as there are people simple enough to take my praises seriously, and also as I’m unable to say much against it and have just declared someone to be profoundly antipathetic to me, the best I can do is to say nothing about it at all.

Cherubini wrote this mass for the coronation of Charles X in Reims on (29 May 1825). It is generally held to be less successful than his C minor Requiem of 1816. Dietsch had just taken up his post as choirmaster and organist of Saint- Eustache. Although in this article Berlioz asks for Dietsch to be given ‘a little encouragement’, in the JD (13 November 1842) he had summed up Dietsch's opera Le Vaisseau fantôme as the work of one who ‘has carefully and over a long period thought about the various doctrines of the masters, objects of his admiration, but who has not yet made a clear choice between them’. Perhaps he simply thought Dietsch should stick to religious music.

M. Dietsch is a tireless fighter. He has taken it upon himself to reactivate the fervour of artists, if not of the public, for religious music; and thanks to the intelligent enthusiasm of the parish priest of Saint-Eustache, who's at one with his young choirmaster in his views, we shall perhaps soon see the problem resolved. We’ve already had the opportunity a few months ago of sincerely praising a mass M. Dietsch had just written and seen performed at Saint-Eustache. Certainly no artist could do more to prove his disinterested love of art than to give, as M. Dietsch has done, his time, his care, his work, his thought, and above all his mass, and all too often his money, without even the certainty of having any listeners, and so without earning the weak compensations of legitimate pride that are so justly his. M. de Gasparin, when he was minister of the Interior, had the excellent idea of using an annual sum from the funds of the beaux-arts to encourage religious music.