The sources for the practical business of Hungarian national band activities in Vienna amount to tens of thousands of advertisements and other notices stating times, places, names, and even how much was charged for a ticket. All of this hard information, preserved in immutable print and often repeated throughout the mass media of the time, constitutes a powerful body of evidence, rich in detail and context. The majority of these notices, however, tell us little or nothing about what music the bands played, or yield any insight into their legendary performing style. The sheer profusion of them also makes it abundantly clear that there was no such thing as a single Gypsy-band repertory. Even in the course of a single visit to Vienna, a Hungarian band might be recalling the romantic Puszta in front of rowdy Hungarian enthusiasts in the Csarda, covering the latest popular favorites in cafes or providing dance music in venues ranging from packed variety halls to aristocratic balls and private functions. The diversity of circumstances and terms of engagement with the Viennese public was enormous, and each individual band would have had its own tastes and regional specialties as well.

Administering literary judgments in Hieroglyphics, Machen begrudgingly admitted Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) to the shelf of great literature but only ‘by the skin of its teeth’. Machen's hesitation indicates much of his concern regarding the relationships between art, analysis, and meaning. Readers might reasonably assume that the central theme of Stevenson's book – that ‘man is not truly one, but truly two’ – would have received Machen's unqualified recommendation because it is a subject with which Machen was obsessed throughout his entire career: the dual nature of knowledge and being, the mystery of humankind's sacramental nature. But for Machen, such a theme requires something beyond Stevenson's ‘mechanical’ execution. It is not enough for art to convey an idea; it must convey that idea in the appropriate way. For Machen, no matter how profound it may be, an idea whose execution is unsuitable or insufficient will perish in transit. This is because the execution of the idea is inextricable from the idea itself; the essence of artistic meaning is irreducible.

In Hieroglyphics, Machen argued that great literature is analysis-proof. Stevenson's mistake was therefore his literalization of this sacramental theme. By disclosing too much, the novel disrespected the mystery it presumed to understand. In Machen's view, this made Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde unworthy of a second reading.

This chapter delves into the witchcraft phenomenon within the Yoruba cosmological framework. The objective is to examine the influence of the sociocultural-religious background on the witchcraft beliefs of Pentecostal pastors, encompassing beliefs, rituals, religious symbols, and spiritual experiences. It commences by providing a succinct historical overview of the Yoruba people and their cultural heritage. A dedicated segment within this chapter scrutinises Àjẹ́ witchcraft in Yorubaland, elucidating its cosmological and anthropological contexts while briefly exploring the disabilities often associated with the phenomenon.

Itan ati Alọ, The Yoruba Cosmogonic Myths

Mythology envelops every aspect of various world religions, including Christianity, Islam, and the Yoruba religion. Within the Yoruba belief system, there exists a fusion of Itan (historical myths), Alọ (folklore, traditions, artifacts), and diverse aesthetics that define the people, culture, language, and religious depth. The Yoruba view their historical accounts as factual events and their folklore as symbolic puzzles. The significance of these folklores varies across different Yoruba communities. According to Marcella Buonanno, myths serve as a fundamental element in a society's religious practices, shaping the essence of religion itself. The Yoruba, therefore, through their embrace of religious narratives and folktales, as articulated by Ògúnadé, ascribe meaning to the unknown through the familiar.

In order for myths to be established, a specific desire must accompany them. These myths serve as enduring and influential invisible tools used to rationalize human actions. Without the longing for individuals to cling to their beliefs, there would be no necessity to craft narratives around the existence of the divine beings they worship, the tales of bravery and inspiration, accounts of conquered realms and divisions, and narratives of valiant warriors and the fallen angels as portrayed in the Bible.

The ‘Appassionata’ Sonata, which followed soon after the ‘Waldstein’, is the first work to employ the entire range of the Erard piano. Stylistically it expands the boundaries and draws on extremes in many of musical domains relevant to structure and expression including tonality, motivic economy, chromatic harmony (the pervasive use of diminished 7ths and of the Neapolitan relationship), dynamic range, and not least, space. The large-scale spatial process over the whole work unfolds a journey from the depths of the keyboard, the lowest F1 introduced at the very start, to the widest possible span of the Erard at the very end. The final bars retrieve the exact registral space of the opening theme and the dramatic registral gesture at the end of the first subject (14–16), the descent from B♭6, is echoed in the closing gesture for the entire sonata, the descent from C7. At the level of the whole sonata there is a bridge across the central movement between the two movements in which the entire range is explored and reached.

The use of high and low registers responds to the formal divisions of the sonata design, showing two different strategies of spatial patterning, featured in earlier sonatas. The first strategy exemplifies the multiple harmonisation pattern, whereby the peak, approached early on, is stabilised only in its final iteration at the climax of the movement or, as in this case, the entire three-movement sonata. The second strategy exemplifies the pattern in which there is a gradual rise to the peak across the exposition and development in each outer movement.

The exhibition Narrating Violence: A Comic Exhibition was on display in the Viennese Sigmund Freud Museum from October 22, 2023, until April 8, 2024. The museum opted to organize this exhibition for several reasons. Firstly, the museum's annual 2023 theme was “violence,” with a focus on sexualized violence. Second, the museum team, Monika Pessler (director), Peter Nömaier (business director), and Daniela Finzi (research director), sought to explore new media within the special exhibition space of the newly renovated museum as an alternative to the book-based permanent exhibition. Thirdly, the team found the comics medium particularly intriguing for engaging with the theme of violence— above all, of course, from a psychoanalytic perspective.

The team commissioned me with the curation of the exhibition— together with Daniela Finzi, who is an expert in psychoanalysis. From the outset, it was important to assemble a diverse selection (e.g., various perspectives, intersectional questions, different carrier media; see below) and adopt an approach that could effectively explore both the topic of violence and the medium of comics while simultaneously reflecting on how to exhibit violence in its various forms and manifestations (e.g., acts of physical violence, but also forms of structural and epistemic violence; see below). Aligned with the museum's interests, the exhibition was organized into four sections: sexualized and gender-based violence, coming of age, Shoah, and, finally, war, fleeing, and migration. It displayed works from over thirty international artists producing Underground Comix and so-called alternative comics. The exhibition also had a small “creative corner” where visitors could reflect on their experience of the exhibition through drawing and writing. A catalog documents the exhibition and offers in-depth information. The following reflections outline the exhibition concept and provide brief analyses of selected exhibits.

Vienna's rich tradition of private music-making deserves more attention than it has received. Domestic music-making remains hidden because music histories of Vienna since Hanslick's Geschichte des Concertswesens have emphasised the public sphere. The focus is on experts and professionals, and the assumption is that such musicians are primarily concerned with public music-making. This chapter revises this understanding, opening the door to the Viennese home. As we have seen in Chapter 1, Hanslick has 1800–30 as the ‘epoch of Beethoven and Schubert’, with a rise in dilettante music-making and a flowering of domestic ‘Quartet-Productionen’ in the hands of the fathers and sons: ‘musically talented sons were to learn violin and cello, whereas nowadays [the 1860s] music instruction in the home is completely absorbed by the piano’. But when we enter the Viennese home of the early nineteenth century, we immediately come across the piano. So we also need to revisit Hanslick's placing of the piano boom as largely a late nineteenth-century phenomenon. In this domestic setting we discover the women and children who formed a substantial majority of Viennese musicians of the period, and many of them played piano. We look closely at published music designed for domestic piano performance for evidence of the standards and functions of their music-making.

We should be angry

Maya Angelou's words capture the central premise of this book: women's anger is not only justified but essential as a force for change. To use it, Angelou proposes, we should get creative in art and active in our communities. Yet, anger remains one of the most stigmatized and misunderstood emotions in women's lives. While the medical field has long examined anger as a response to trauma (e.g., as a result of war or violence), other areas of women's lived experience that provoke anger have received far less attention. These include relationships at home and in the workplace, inequities in the health system, and systemic injustices in politics.

Austrian author Marlene Streeruwitz has written one of the first Covid-19 novels, So ist die Welt geworden (This is what has become of the world, 2021), in which the protagonist Betty, a writer, depicts her anger about life in quarantine: “Sie war wutend. ‘Betty ist bose,’ sagte sie zu ihrem Spiegelbild. Sie war das Leben allein gewohnt gewesen. Sie hatte sich fur dieses Leben entschieden. Und jetzt muste sie so leben. Und alle anderen auch” (She was angry. “Betty is mad,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. She had been used to living alone.

Correspondence from W. J. Duthoit to A. A. Harding, October 3, 1937

At the time of this handwritten correspondence, William James Duthoit (1885–1965) was professor of instrumentation at the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall. Albert Austin Harding (1880–1958) was director of bands at the University of Illinois. This letter emphasizes the fact that the greatest similarity between the British military band and the American concert band, instrumentation, is also the greatest difference.

16 Cludleigh Road

Twickenham

Middlesex

3rd October 1937

Dear Mr. Harding,

I have been in correspondence with Mr. Ralph Hawkes recently with reference to some opinions expressed by you about my Military Band arrangements. The letter which was received from the manager of Boosey & Hawkes New York branch about his conversations with you, an extract of which was forwarded to me, commented rather unfairly about my work. Mr. Ralph Hawkes assured me that the remarks were not intended to be read too badly and he asked me to write personally to you.

On your last visit to England we had a very pleasant two hours talk on the American Contest Bands, and your requirements I made a particular note of. I might say here that in all my arrangements I have considered you and the large American bands first. One part of our conversation dealt with the E flat Alto and Bass Clarinet. You particularly impressed upon me to score the 1st Bassoon for the E flat Alto Clarinet and the 2nd Bassoon part for the Bass Clarinet as your Bassoon players were weak. This has been done according to your wishes.

It is difficult to know precisely when Gower began work on various versions of what eventually became the Vox Clamantis, but assuredly the accession of Richard II in July of 1377 focused and intensified his labors. The poem's initial purpose, to review the state of the realm, particularly in respect to the clergy, was reconceived to provide counsel for the young king Richard. The poet's first major work, the Mirour de l’Omme, directed to the Anglo-Norman-speaking world of Richard's predecessor, his grandfather Edward III, had covered much of the same material, albeit in a manner unsuited to Gower's new aim and audience. The poet may have thought that Richard, born in Bordeaux and affecting Parisian French throughout his life, would likely not have been impressed by the language of the Mirour. Latin would have recommended itself for many reasons, not least among them its prestige as the language of learning and serious literature. Possibly, too, Latin appealed as best suited to the instructional posture Gower adopts, in the manner of the influential pseudo-Aristotelean Secretum Secretorum, in which Aristotle, in Latin, schools the young Alexander in the essentials of statecraft. The appropriateness of Latin for such a poem would not have been lost on Sir Simon Burley, under whose tutelage the ten-year-old king was, when Gower was composing the Vox.

The above, from a letter sent by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II to the rulers of Europe in 1241, provides an interesting indication of his perception of various of the regions of medieval Europe. Many are, not surprisingly, mentioned here, though Frederick's descriptions of the insular dominions bordering the English kingdom of Henry III (reigned 1216–72) are particularly notable. For Frederick, Scotland is here associated with its marshes; Wales, or perhaps more so the Welsh, are noted for their agility, and Ireland for its ferocity. Of course, the emperor had visited none of these lands. Hence his descriptions were the product of hearsay filtering back to his imperial court. Yet, they do not fall far off their mark. Indeed, the kings of England had been, and would continue to be, impeded in Scotland by the country's topography, while Henry and many of his ancestors had frequently found themselves chasing Welsh shadows among the peaks of Snowdonia.

The great ninth-century Frankish emperor Charlemagne, whose legend spread across medieval Europe and beyond, almost certainly himself spoke a Germanic language. He is claimed by French culture as Charlemagne, king of the French and emperor, and by German culture as the emperor Karl der Grosse. From the late eleventh century onwards, narratives in different forms of French vernacular were the dominant vehicle for the spread of his legend. Other volumes in this series have discussed translations of these narratives into the different languages of Western Europe, notably into Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, and the Scandinavian and Celtic languages. The series has also included a volume on the legends of Charlemagne preserved in Latin, some of which present original text, but all of which exploit vernacular myths and legends to some extent. Here we turn to the area that is now France and the Walloon regions of modern Belgium, the birthplace of many of these myths, and to the languages of the North and South of that land, respectively known as the langue d’oïl and the langue d’oc or Occitan.

The importance of Charlemagne to European cultural memory is of the highest order. Historically the founder of the successor to the western Roman Empire, which in various forms survived as the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806, he was transformed into a mythic figure in a variety of literary forms and in representational art from soon after his death in 814 CE to the present day.

En 1990, a partir de la apertura al público del registro para extranjeros del Archivo General de la Nación, se empezó la recopilación de fichas de los judíos askenazíes que habían vivido en México. La información con la que esta comunidad judía contaba anteriormente se había dañado o perdido durante el sismo de 1985 (CDIJUM 2024), por lo que la compilación de este material arrojó nueva luz sobre el pasado de las(os) judeomexicanas(os). Como resultado, se publica Generaciones Judías en México (Gojman 1993), una colección de siete libros para conmemorar el septuagésimo aniversario de la fundación de la comunidad askenazí en México. Asimismo, en 1993 se funda el Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Comunidad Ashkenazí de México (CDICA), que una década después se convertirá en el Centro de Documentación e Investigación Judío de México (CDIJUM 2024). Los viajes formativos de Seligson inician en la década de los ochenta y su visión enriquece el debate de las diferentes comunidades de extranjeros que se han asentado en México. En particular, en Todo aquí es polvo, la escritora reflexiona a partir de historias de vida que van más allá de los marcos nacionales, como hija de inmigrantes de judíos askenazíes —“originarios del oriente de Europa” (ibid)—.

Posteriormente, el 2 de octubre de 2012, el gobierno español hace público su decreto para que familias sefardíes soliciten su ciudadanía española, justo una década después de que se cumplieran quinientos años del Edicto de Expulsión de Judíos de España (Boletín oficial del Estado 2015).

The Hispanic monarchy was one of the first modern monarchies to institute a systematic, political use of dance. Evidently, court dance had been codified in the second half of the Quattrocento at the powerful courts of northern Italy (Ferrara, Milan) where, alongside other artists, Domenico da Piacenza and Guglielmo Ebreo produced choreographies which contributed to amplifying their patrons’ power at spectacular and lavish festivities. Yet the Este and Sforza courts did not reign over such a large expanse of territories as those in possession of the Hispanic monarchy, which required specific spatial practices to be governed. To address this need, the Hispanic monarchy deployed an itinerant court well into the sixteenth century and, after that period, it maintained the regular practice of visiting its territories. Moreover, festivities and dance were a central part of court life which allowed for the theatricalisation of the monarch's presence. This presence was simultaneously direct and mediated. Direct, because the monarch directly participated in many of the festivities’ acts (entrance, joust, tournament, sarao). Mediated, because the performance of power through the body of the monarch was inscribed in an extensive symbolic system which produced numerous images of the monarch.

Just as with its Italian predecessors, the political efficacy of dance at these festivities depended on its representational potentialities. However, throughout the Siglos de Oro this system was not yet very stable. The king didn't always dance (it seems that Charles V only danced when strictly necessary), and each monarch had their own particular relation to dance which evolved over time (Philip II danced a lot as a young man, and much less in older age). Equally, the framework for courtly dance shifted and, with it, its function and meaning. These changes, at times more oscillations and juxtapositions than clean breaks, make it difficult to separate the concept of representation associated with dance. However, as the period evolved, representation affirmed itself as a central concept in dance practices and in the discourses that described, legitimated or condemned it.