‘Don't you think it's a disgrace, and a sure sign of poor education, to be forced to rely on an extraneous justice – that of masters or judges – for want of a sense of justice of one's own?’

‘The greatest disgrace possible,’ he said. ‘And yet, is it really any more disgraceful, would you say, than the person who in addition to spending the greater part of his life in the law courts as defendant or plaintiff, is also convinced, such is his ignorance of what is good, that his cleverness at committing crimes, and his subsequent ability to use every evasion and loophole to escape conviction and avoid paying the penalty, is actually a matter for self-congratulation? And all for the sake of what is trivial and of no importance, because he does not realise how much finer and better it is to see to it that his life does not depend on finding a juror who is half-asleep.’

1. Christian culture and secular justice between repression and reconciliation

In the evolution of the concepts and concrete methods of governing human justice in Western European societies, Christian thought, including its Judaic roots, has played a decisive role. The debate on such a complex and profound topic is so vast that any attempt at synthesis proves impossible.

In Parts I and II I explored facets of state and dynastic reform, and economic patriotism, in the geopolitical context of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, including Prussia and East Prussia and smaller principalities. My study endeavours to identify geo-political and historical nuances of eighteenth-century patriotism that would come to shape manifestations of nationalism in the nineteenth century. My case studies of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – composite monarchies – record tensions between identities and counter-identities (ethnic, cultural), and between patriotic allegiances to regions, principalities, or larger state formations. Regions such as Silesia (see Chapter 9) are characterised by the ‘entangled histories’ of Poland, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and the Austrian Empire – histories that embody cultural transfer and interconnectedness yet also dependencies, interferences, and interdependencies.

In Part III, I turn to the conglomerate state as a political structure that too entangled histories and cultures across Northern Germany and Scandinavia. As a reaction to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, conglomerate states (and composite monarchies) ensured that their survival and territorial integrity were guaranteed. Sahlins has argued that as a ‘by-product’, ‘the base for modern nations and nationalism emerged’. Indeed, we saw in Chapter 4 that smaller principalities in the Holy Roman Empire either formed small political federations or, following Napoleon's occupation, negotiated their survival as either part of the Rheinbund, or as independent principalities. Yet, the emergence of nationalism and the formation of modern European nation-states was neither analogous nor uniform.

Exploring the structure and implications of salvation history in Classical adaptations such as In Cath Catharda highlights the broader significance of universal chronology and typology across the medieval Irish literary corpus. This chapter will turn to non-Classical Otherworldly beings in texts beyond the Classical adaptations. It questions how interpretatio of the Classical gods may have influenced supernatural characters in medieval Irish literature more generally, and how these literary works fit into a framework of universal history, as outlined in the preceding chapters. I will present two primary case studies that highlight the ways in which Classical syncretism allowed medieval Irish authors writing about the pre-Christian past to connect Irish prehistory to world history. The first case study will consist of an analysis of the motif of magically-induced thirst in Togail Bruidne Da Derga (‘The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel’), Cath Maige Tuired (‘The [Second] Battle of Moytura’), Cath Maige Tuired Cunga (‘The First Battle of Mag Tuired’), and Statius's Thebaid. The second case study will address potential Ovidian influence in Tochmarc Étaíne (‘The Wooing of Étaín’) as well as wider Classical affinities present in the text. From these specific examples, a new approach towards Classical influence develops: one that focuses on narrative affinity and thematic influence rather than literal quotation and direct borrowing of characters or plots. The background to these textual relationships is an idea of salvation-oriented world history, as discussed especially in Chapters 2 and 4, in which events and characters in different cultures could be linked due to chronological position and typological significance. As a result, a picture emerges of the broader learned context in which early medieval Irish texts interacted with and received Classical mythology.

As it is a Formality very much in Fashion of late amongst the Writers, to Compliment their Readers, by giving them a View of their following Entertainment in a Preface; we shall make bold to follow the Example, but without making the feigned Apologies, That what is here offered to thy Candid Perusal, was published to prevent or decry any surreptitious copy; neither meerly to satisfie the Importunity of Friends: What is here presented to publick View, is a Play written some time since by one of the purest Wits this Nation e’er produc’d for Dramatick Poetry; and with the rest of his Works, has found a general Acceptance and Applause as often as it came upon the Stage, not only on the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane, but likewise in Lincolns-Inn-Fields, Dorset Garden, and at the Queens's Theatre in the Haymarket.

Were we to reveal the Author of this incomparable Comedy, as that we durst not without a Violation of the Promise made to his exemplary Modesty, which often requested the Gentleman, to whom he bequeathed this real Treasure, never to divulge its Parent, his very Name would challenge a just Veneration from all the most sensible Part of Mankind, as well as strike Terror in the severest Critics; who, amongst all their carping Comments, cannot deny, but his Vein was as naturally good in the Tragick way as the Comick: For in the first, he was as exact in describing the several Passions, (which gives the Draught of Nature, and is the most infallible Rule for moving the Soul) as in the latter most successful in drawing the Images or Characters really Natural; for not like Plautus, who studied to please the common People, does he make a Miser more Covetous, or a morose Man more Troublesome than the Original; but, in Imitation of Terence, who endeavour’d to please the better Sort, he confines himself within the Bounds of Nature, and represents their Vices, without making them either better or worse.

In 1997, Lynden Barber concluded in the Australian that ‘the Grainger story has it all – sex, deviance, … violence … and, as if one could forget, music. No surprise, then, that producers should be clawing at each other to be first to get the story on the screen in all its lurid glory’. Barber was responding to the competition between two separate Grainger biopics put forward to the Australian Film Finance Corporation in the mid-1990s, but these were not the first projects to propose putting Grainger's life on film. Since the 1970s, nearly a dozen feature films about Grainger – not including a string of documentaries – have been proposed. Some never made it past the initial idea: Thérèse Radic's A Whip Round for Percy Grainger, for instance, was optioned by Ken Russell in the 1980s, but never developed.2 Others had completed scripts, funding secured and directors attached, but never made it to production. The 1999 film Passion: The Story of Percy Grainger (dir. Peter Duncan) is the only Grainger biopic completed to date, but its genesis was also fraught with difficulties. With so many films mooted only to fail, Sydney Morning Herald critic Bryce Hallett wondered if each time ‘the maverick Grainger had risen from his grave, shouting: “No, no, no – not yet!”’

This chapter considers a range of Grainger biopics (most uncompleted) from the 1980s and 1990s, examining their process of development and engagement with the Grainger Museum and other sources. Four of these works had completed scripts: Alan Seymour's Poor Put-Upon Percy (1982), Wain Fimeri's Blue Rose (1996), and two distinctly different versions of Passion: the original adaptation of Rob George's Percy and Rose written by George and Peter Goldsworthy (1995), and a considerably revised version by Don Watson that became the completed film.

In his magisterial history of Europe, Norman Davies described late Imperial Russia as a 'magnificent beast' that had 'recently shot forward as one of the most glamorous stars in the European firmament'. From the 1880s onwards Russia, rather than being seen as a nation on the margins that was not quite European, rapidly gained in status as a world power. In consequence Russian culture was increasingly regarded not as peripheral but as integral to that of central Europe: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov were reckoned alongside the acknowledged giants of European literature; in music composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky were seen as worthy to take their place alongside the established titans of the Austro-German canon. As if to underline this perceived cultural equivalence, on 5 June 1896 the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Muck gave a gala concert in Moscow in honour of the newly crowned Russian Czar Nicholas II. Ever keen to enhance his presence on the wider European stage, Kaiser Wilhelm II was determined to honour his cousin and fellow emperor with the best that German art could offer.

Russian musical life in the period was centred largely on the two centres of Moscow and the Imperial capital St Petersburg. To the visitor, however, the two cities were very different in character. In an eye-witness account from 1909, lieder singer Elena Gerhardt (1883-1961) described how 'Moscow was so typically Russian, while St Petersburg was like a big international city'.

The monophonic sequence in the late Middle Ages barely qualifies as an individual topic in current music-historical surveys. This picture has not changed significantly since 1965, when Bruno Stäblein described the period after 1200 as “the reverberation after the zenith” and the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the final phase marked by dilettante interventions in the first edition of the Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. The historical survey of the monophonic sequence in the latest edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music cuts from the development of the rhymed sequence in the twelfth century to the description of the polyphonic sequence in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Similarly, the monophonic sequence of the late Middle Ages is only briefly mentioned by Lori Kruckenberg in the latest edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, noting the gradual elimination of the sequence from the liturgy after 1400. As with previous interpretations, her chapter on (monophonic) sequences in the Cambridge History of Medieval Music focuses almost exclusively on the period up to the end of the twelfth century.

The repertory of sequences in medieval Bohemia shows such a different picture that it is difficult to place it within these narratives. Most sources date from after 1300—that is, from the “post-zenith” period—and are therefore of only secondary importance in terms of the axis of development thus defined.

But the Gypsy primas musicians are true virtuosi, even if their virtuosity is no longer of our day. They enjoy maintaining the outdated tricks, which they perform exquisitely. Their birdsong on the violin sounds is so enchanting that Ole Bull never played it more sweetly. Everyone listened in fascination to the “Cserebogar, sarga cserebogar” (May beetle, yellow May beetle …) of the late Pal Racz, the Prince of Wales's favorite musician, and to “Repulj fecskem …” (Fly, my swallow) by Jani Zsakay from Koros. Two strings snapped on the latter's violin during the performance, but he played the rest of his folk tune to the end with perfect virtuosity, like Paganini serenading his love to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

—Wiener allgemeine Zeitung, June 28, 1887, 2

Throughout the period 1850–1914, the Hungarian band presence gradually evolved and expanded in Vienna, reflecting and feeding off the city's growth from a walled imperial citadel into an industrial metropolis. At the same time, though, the city was still very much the home and living experience of composers including Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, and Schonberg, and more than anywhere else it was still Vienna that embodied the legacy of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert.

The referents of many of these kennings are contextually determined, i.e. the choice between priest or bishop is based on consideration of the stage of Guðmundr's life to which the narrative relates and not only on the individual kenning patterns.

Kennings for Guðmundr Arason in Arngr Gd

heilagr skýlir hölda ‘the holy shelterer of men [= God]’ Arngr Gd1/7 [here used of God, but in Gd 39/1 used of Guðmundr]

yfirmaðr saðrar kristni várrar ‘superior of our true Christianity [bishop = Guðmundr]’ Arngr Gd 5/2

skýra skuggsjá skrautvaxinnar brautar dygða ‘the pure mirror of the beautifully grown path of virtues [= Virgin Mary > = Guðmundr]’ Arngr Gd 6/1–2

hoskur Hólabyskup ‘the wise bishop of Hólar [= Guðmundr]’ Arngr Gd 6/5

sútaukinn bætir sálna ‘the grief-swollen healer of souls [priest = Guðmundr]’

In a wide-ranging conversation with Nigel Simeone on 22 March 2025, Jakub Hrůša discussed the history of the Sinfonietta on record, the challenges of rehearsing and performing the work, and broader issues of Janáček interpretation. He offers some particularly valuable insights into the practicalities of preparing the Sinfonietta, especially the problems of orchestral balance. We began with a discussion of recordings and Hrůša was particularly eloquent on the great Janáček specialist František Jílek, whose work was revered in Brno, and a conductor who deserves to be known more widely.

NS: My first encounters with the Sinfonietta were on record: Karel Ančerl's famous recording, Charles Mackerras's passionate first version, and the more subtle (and very effective) Rafael Kubelík version with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. How did you first get to hear the piece?

JH: František Jílek, with the Brno Philharmonic. It was not even on an LP but on a cassette tape which had the Sinfonietta on one side and Taras Bulba on the other. The ‘advantage’ of those tapes was it was not so easy to jump around, so it made you really listen to the music! But let me tell you what I think about Jílek – and what an important figure he was. It's very interesting because he conducted almost everything by Janáček, much more, I think, than other famous Janáček interpreters like Karel Ančerl or Rafael Kubelík. Jílek conducted the whole oeuvre. He did all the mature operas from Jenůfa onwards and even The Beginning of a Romance. But I had a more personal kind of indoctrination into Jílek's Janáček because the person who taught me when I was taking my very first steps in conducting was Evžen Holiš, who was Jílek's assistant for many years at the Brno National Theatre.

The ofttimes circuitious route we followed in the previous section addressed a period of profound changes not exclusive to dance or to the Hispanic Monarchy but which nonetheless found special resonance in both these areas. These shifts would modify, at least in part, the coordinates of the controversy surrounding dance, displacing the debate beyond a moral problematics while never completely superseding it.

In the Spanish context, language was the foremost tool used to configure the debate on the legitimacy of dance at a crossroads that seemed – only seemed – to resolve this tension. On the one hand, there was baile. On the other, there was danza. The former is considered popular and potentially vile. The latter is deemed noble and glorious. The former is lively. The latter is restrained. The former uses hands and arms. The latter, feet and legs. In 1611, Covarrubias was the first author to write of this distinction between the two choreic modalities of dance in his Tesoro:

Although Covarrubias does not condemn bailes as such, he does present a long list of examples that aim to prove their dangerousness. Danza, by contrast, is exemplified through a series of dances dignified by their ancient or military pedigree.

Gustav Holst lived at a time when the latter-day English musical renaissance was taking hold in his homeland, with composers seeking to break the chains of Germanic Romanticism and look toward expanding their own musical horizons. This Holst did in great fashion, adopting seemingly unrelated entities such as the words of Walt Whitman, Sanskrit literature, English folk tunes, astrology, and twentieth-century techniques into his compositions. But there were other influences as well, from writing down and incorporating Algerian oboe melodies to dealing with the constant criticism of his closest friend Ralph Vaughan Williams. In addition, Holst had to face and accept the reality of writing music for his students and other amateur groups that often featured instrumental contingencies that were less than complete. Sometimes this applied to professional ensembles as well; both versions of Hammersmith: A Prelude and Scherzo attest to this, offering options in instrumentation. It was a case of sacrificing the ideal for the practical.

Holst's wind works, particularly those for military and brass bands, have long since been acknowledged as staples of their respective core repertoires. These works are not islands in a sea of musical compositions but rather, important components in the continuum of the composer's life and work. They provide a legacy within the trajectory, in much the same way that many of his choral works do.

Here, then, is a complete listing of Gustav Holst's wind works. Yet, there is more. It is fitting to include the wind works of his daughter, Imogen Holst, as well, for starting with The Unfortunate Traveller, written heavily under her father's influence, and continuing through her editions of his wind works, she continued his legacy. Did it stop with her? No, of course not; it endures every time a performance of one of these works by either Holst takes place.

Mothers have been overlooked in romance scholarship in favour of fantastical adventures, courtly love stories, and connections with historical events. They are often, however, central to the action in these narratives. Recognising the importance of these characters not only reveals an additional depth to the romances, but offers a re-evaluation of the role of elite mothers in medieval society. The romance genre places mothers and motherhood in a variety of socially constructed spaces, leading to an exploration of the complexities of their identities and selfhood in relation to wider social structures. Their presence and actions in particular spaces, such as birthing rooms, castles, and the forest, reinforce or disrupt concepts of gender, status, and identity in the texts and beyond.

Romance uses representations of motherhood to explore the role's centrality to the complex negotiations of patrilineal society. Imagining the huge narratorial consequences of breaking down the protected space of the birthing room, for example, allows the Roman de Silence, the Roman de Melusine, Octavian, and Emaré to advocate for women within that space, implying that if women's agency in the birthing room is taken away, there are serious social consequences for families and nations. Beyond the birthing room, mothers in romance influence masculine endeavours, upholding the needs of their children and the wider community when male tempers flare. The acts of intercession explored in Athelston, Melusine, and Sir Degrevant show women using their maternal status to remind male characters that their actions have repercussions beyond the ostensibly masculine spheres of war and politics. In soothing tensions created by men, these characters provide a framework to guide society through subtler methods than combat and law. Motherhood represents a balance that stabilises society.

On 23 February 1235, Henry III, king of England, wrote to Joan, queen of Scots, informing her of the betrothal of ‘our and your beloved sister Isabella’ (‘dilecte sororis nostre et vestre Isabelle’) to Emperor Frederick II (d. 1250). This letter's affectionate tone and Henry's anticipation that Joan would be interested to hear about their middle sister, Isabella, almost makes us forget that Henry was announcing one of the most prestigious marriages of the Plantagenet dynasty: a marriage that united the English crown to the Empire. Henry reported to Joan how Frederick had sent messengers to England to negotiate this union, and how Henry, acting on the advice of his magnates, had consented to the match. Isabella, for her part, had accepted Frederick as her husband, with Peter de Vinea, Frederick's emissary and chief adviser, swearing on the emperor's behalf that he would take Isabella as his wife. The political importance of this alliance in Henry's eyes was confirmed further at the foot of this letter's enrolment on the close rolls, where it was recorded that similar news had been dispatched across the British Isles. Not only were similar letters sent to Luke, archbishop of Dublin (d. 1255), and Maurice fitzGerald (d. 1257), the justiciar of Ireland, but also to King Henry's brothers-in-law: Joan's husband, Alexander II (d. 1249), king of Scots, and Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (d. 1240), prince of Gwynedd, the husband of Henry III's illegitimate half-sister, another Joan.

Isabella's imperial marriage promised to place the English king, who was himself still unmarried, firmly at the heart of European politics. The excitement that accompanied the match, from an English perspective, was reflected in accounts written by contemporary writers.