Q. You are renowned for your virtuosic technique. I’m quite certain that if you can't play something, it's unplayable. How do you define or understand the term “technique”?

A. Technique to me is the ability to make the music flow through you. I have always taken great care that a fast note leads as happy a life as a slow note, that it is as beautiful and as sonorous; in other words, you don't lose the essence of the music. To me, every note has a life that is filled with music. Just producing a pitch, a tone, is not enough to please me. And yet, there are many instrumentalists who regard sheer speed as an end unto itself. If I can't play with the kind of tone and subtlety that I want, then even if I can execute the notes at a fast tempo, I will not sacrifice tonal quality merely to achieve velocity. I never play at a tempo that will deprive me of a feeling of satisfaction, of fulfillment.

So, speed for me has been a byproduct of looking for substance in my playing. I’ve always said that if I went deaf, I would continue to play the guitar, because I love the way it feels, the sensory relationship that the strings have with my fingers, the guitar vibrating with my body, and the sensation that when I am holding the guitar, it and my body are like two pieces of a puzzle coming together. When we are together in that embrace, our body becomes the body of the sound itself. I’ve always felt that one of the most important things to do in developing technique is to avoid the feeling that I am me and the guitar is the guitar and I am playing this instrument and it's doing what I tell it to do.

6.1 Introduction

Having presented a quantitative analysis of the relevant evidence in Part I, in this chapter I begin to broaden the focus, to consider the general purpose of church-raiding and its relevance to Viking political and wider goals in Ireland, something that is most evident from the mid-ninth century onwards. After the first phase of raiding, ending in the 820s, there are clear signs of transition to more organised, sustained activity, and of more or less permanent Viking settlement in Ireland.

There is a tendency to associate Viking settlement with trade, but raiding did not cease because of settlement. Rather, Vikings who settled in Ireland from the mid-ninth century at the latest continued to raid, especially churches, while also practising trade and craft industry. Trade and raiding could be linked, since human captives comprised the key prize of Viking raiders, as shown in Chapter 4. Captives might become objects of trade, either as ransomees or as slaves. However, settlement doubtless altered the perspective of Vikings, not least because they were now themselves potential targets of attack. Relations between Vikings and native Irish royal dynasties created a new context for church-raiding. Even temporary bases afforded opportunities for alliances of Viking and Irish elites and for other non-adversarial contact, such as trade not directly related to raiding. Trading activity is attested by archaeology but not by annals. It is unquantifiable, but its impact is likely to have been mostly limited to the elite, in a pre-modern and predominantly agriculture-based socio-economic order. It is the politico-military sphere of relations between Vikings and Irish that is best documented in the annals. Detailed study of these relations and the implications for church-raiding is the preoccupation of the following chapters.

Q. You yourself are famous. How do you feel about fame?

A. I am not aware of being famous. I have never really been interested in my own fame or anyone else's in my life. Fame is something that I’ve never thought about. Every single president I’ve met is famous, but what matters to me is how I feel about the person, what he or she has done, what they have contributed. And I ask myself that same question: What have I contributed? Take President Jimmy Carter, for instance. We met him way before he became president. He started coming to concerts before he became governor. He loved the guitar and music, and I early on became aware that he was a beautiful person, a really nice guy, one who vibrated in sympathy with and got emotional about music. He would come anytime we played in Atlanta, before and during his governorship. Then, when he became president, he invited us to perform at the White House.

One experience with him stands out in my memory of that occasion. I couldn't make it to the rehearsal the day prior to the concert because my daughter Angelina was having eye surgery that very day. Her mother, Kristine, was doing needlepoint, and the needle accidently went through her eye, doing major damage. She was only 8 years old and couldn't take care of herself. So, I went with her to the surgery and then caught a flight the day of the performance. The dressing room that Carter gave us was the private bedroom he shared with Rosalynn. I remember telling him I was sorry I couldn't make it to rehearsal because of my daughter, and he was so empathetic: “Let me check with my doctors.

In the first place As to the account and Discourse concerning Giants in the first Letter upon the finding the large Teeth and bones found buryed in the Earth.

There may yet remain some doubt whether these were ever human. Wherefore it were very desirable that an exact figure or draught were made of these Teeth and bones if possible to be procured. Especially to the bone 17 foot long supposed to have bin a thigh bone of a Man wherewith the measure or girth of it in its several parts this would determine whether human or not.

A Catalogue and Description of those American Plants, which are strangers to our Climate would be very acceptable to us. But as to this Article I suppose my good friend Mr. James Petiver fellow of the Royal Society will give you a farther Information by Letter as he promised me. Next as to Birds, the largness of your wild Turkeys and Eagles is remarkable an exact figure of these with a scale as to their proportions with what observable in them were very desirable.

﹛A﹜s for your Itinerants the vast flights of Pigeons were it not so well attested would be almost incredible. It might be worth notice what winds favour their coming, as likewise with what winds they depart, which might possibly point out their Native country. But as for any other attendant on our Earth except the Moon it could not always so shelter it selfe under the Rays of the sun as to be invisible. To what Species of the Numerous Tribe of the Pigeons these belong, with a figure and description is desired.

From 1780 to 1787, the Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts produced fifteen reports, filling more than 1,200 large-format pages in the Journals of the House of Commons. The results of the Commissioners’ work went well beyond the intended remit of their assignment. Instead of the expected description of particular abuses and accounting deficits, the Commissioners delivered a systematic survey of British public offices. In this survey, public administration appeared as a coherent subject for the first time.

The appointment of the Commissioners was a result of the financial and political crisis, which was exacerbated by the alarming course of the American Revolutionary War. The Economical Reform Debates had exposed serious administrative deficits and a lack of overview of the state's financial administration that was disturbing to an already shaken ministry. In their reports, the Commissioners reacted to this sense of crisis. In their eyes, piecemeal corrections or the exposure of corrupt individuals was not enough. A general reform was needed to resolve the crisis. To work out lasting solutions, the Commissioners made good use of the powers they had received. They examined books and systematically interviewed office-holders under oath. By comparing equivalent departments, they identified best practices. In their inquiries, the Commissioners brought to bear their diverse expertise, which shaped their joint approach and allowed for a perspective that was very different from the perspectives dominating the parliamentary discussion. It is likely that the members with a background in military administration were crucial for the Commissioners’ familiarity with the administrative structures.

When Francisque and his company left England shortly after Easter 1719, they had probably learned from Paris that little theatrical activity had been tolerated at the Foire Saint-Germain, and that this was likely to be the case at Saint-Laurent in July. It seems that the company set its sights on Holland, where they gave a season in The Hague in a theatre on Casuariestraat. Among the actors were Louis de Verneuil and his wife Marie-Louise Chabot, Charles Lesage, and Marie Antoinette de Tourneville, all of whom were to be associated with Francisque's companies for many years. According to Jan Fransen, this venture collapsed because of competition from a rival theatre on the Voorhout. Francisque and his company must then have returned to Paris.

At the Foire Saint-Germain of 1720, while the Opéra maintained its ban on singing and dancing, fair performers were to be allowed pieces with ‘prose’ (spoken) monologues and jargon. But there was a darker reason for this apparent tolerance. Despite the wary alliance through which the two official theatres had destroyed the Opéra-comique of 1718, the Comédie-Française was becoming unhappy about the inroads that the new Comédie-Italienne was making into its audience and its box office, once it started performing in French as well as Italian. It therefore attempted to divide and rule the opposition.

Armed with the panoply of responses to the book of Genesis, both exegetical and literary, Martin Evans endeavors to rescue Milton from his principal detractors and the numerous other critics who have found fault with his magnum opus for numerous reasons. He opines that Milton's imagination “was at once both imitative and creative,” and that he deserves credit for not only the ways that he has emulated traditional materials, but for the ways he has transformed them. He argues the Paradise Lost is the “culmination” of the re-presentations of a myth that “had surprisingly humble origins.” Even so staunch a defender of Miltonic craftsmanship as Evans, however, concedes that “the theological reconciliation of foreknowledge with free will worked out in Book III is, admittedly, unsatisfactory.” In this essay I will suggest that the failures in Book III are attributable to both Milton's attempt to present an unrepresentable theological doctrine dramatically and the fundamental incompatibility of Christian modes of theological representation with the classical modes of theological representation that Milton chooses to imitates.

Keenly aware of the “defects” of Milton's God in Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis concludes his discussion of the poem with: “The theological flaws … would not be poetically disastrous if only Milton had shown more poetical prudence. A God … much worse than Milton’s, would escape criticism if only He had been made sufficiently awful, mysterious, and vague.” He then quotes some lines from the poem that meet his criteria

Q. Do you have a rough idea how many works you have premiered?

A. The ones that come immediately to mind include Diálogos (written for Andrés Segovia), Concierto ibérico, Tonada concertante (written for Celedonio Romero), and Concierto en flamenco by Federico Moreno Torroba; Concierto andaluz, Concierto madrigal, and Concierto para una fiesta by Joaquín Rodrigo; Concierto flamenco by Francisco de Madina (1907–72); Introduçaõ aos Chôros by Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959); Concerto Mariachi by Michael Zearott (1937–2019); Troubadour Music by Morton Gould (1913–96); Nocturnos de Andalucía and Concierto de Cienfuegos (for guitar quartet) by Lorenzo Palomo; and three concertos by my father: Concierto de Málaga, Fiesta andaluza, and El cortijo de Don Sancho. It has been a great privilege for me to do so many premieres, including those with the quartet.

In the 1940s, Ernst Brugger published a major work on ‘Der Schöne Feigling’ (the Handsome Coward or the ‘Biaus Mauvais’) in Arthurian literature. He suggested that several Arthurian heroes were based on this archetype, including Durmart le Gallois, Brunor (the youth with the ill-cut coat) and particularly Gareth, the hero of Malory's ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney’. Some non-Arthurian heroes, including Ipomedon, also came within the sphere of his ambitious study.

Following in Brugger's footsteps – and sometimes standing on his shoulders – this article will propose a different Arthurian ‘archetype’, the ‘Biaus Niais’ (Modern French le Beau Niais, which we might render in English, rather inadequately, as the Handsome Fool). For any reader familiar with Brugger's magnum opus, it will be apparent that this article uses, mutatis mutandis, some of the same arguments he advanced. Not every instance will be noted, but the essential element is the view expressed here that these arguments point towards, and often work better with, the idea of a Biaus Niais than that of a Biaus Mauvais. There will also be one other, fundamental difference. The great weakness of Brugger's work, interesting and useful though it is, lay in his insistence that there was one model of the Biaus Mauvais story, from which all others must stem, and that he could reconstruct. While it is possible that any one type of literary text may have started with a single exemplar, it is not certain, since two authors might independently compose their own version of an oral tale. It is also highly unlikely that, even if that were the case, we would be able reliably to reconstruct the bones of that exemplar.

In the Alliterative Morte Arthure, a poem composed in English by an anonymous poet at the turn of the fifteenth century, the above two passages describe Arthur's experience of what we would today term ‘mountaineering’: the physical act of climbing a mountain or promontory. The brevity of these passages, in contrast to the ever-expanding body of literature on mountain ascents since the advent of Alpinism, is one example of the radical shift in our attitude towards mountains in recent centuries. For many in the modern world, mountains are a source of pleasure, excitement, wonder and escape, in a way that would seem alien to our medieval forebears. And yet mountains and hills are as much a part of the medieval world as they are our own, linked to worship, military strategy, defence, geopolitics, agriculture, industry, travel and commerce. In art and literature, they serve as sites of contemplation, as figurative embodiments of worldly and spiritual power, and as otherworldly landscapes associated with monstrosity and otherness. In the specific context of the medieval Arthurian tradition, the primary focus of this essay, they are also linked to the figure of King Arthur.

As laid out in the last two chapters, London served as a centre of the book trade and of English Catholic culture, including the persistent production of Catholic books. However, the London-printed books served more than the local, urban market. They can be found throughout Catholic and Protestant library catalogues, though only rarely with a recorded London imprint. They were accompanied by even more books smuggled in from the continent, many of which passed through contacts in London. The books travelled through various networks that linked the capital to the provinces. This connection is particularly important for studies of non-urban English Catholics, who can come across as isolated from the urban centre. It reinforces the active mobility of early modern people from a variety of backgrounds. Importantly, these circulation networks were not one-directional from London: books, and the ideas they carried, travelled back and forth, widening the reach of print culture.

Texts travelled along various paths, facilitated by networks constructed around different types of relationships. Unlike those of dissenting groups like the Quakers, who at this time had developed tightly organised networks of distribution involving travelling ministers and lending libraries, Catholic books found themselves in the hands of readers through a wide variety of less formalised means. Hawkers, priests, servants, friends, and family all transported books with a range of destinations in mind. Some items were re-sold in local markets, others found places in collegiate libraries, while still others went into private homes (including those of Protestants).

Few dates in British or European history can rival 1066 for its sheer magnetic pull. It is one of just ‘two genuine dates’ in Sellar and Yeatman's scurrilous 1066 and All That (the other being the Roman invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar in 55 BC). It is also the only date from the Middle Ages with genuine public visibility, at least within the Anglophone world. Yet as the historian's mantra runs, things are more complicated than ‘1066 and all that’. The Norman Conquest was a process, not an event – one that began well before 1066 and encompassed all parts of Britain, not just the southern English heartlands of Edward the Confessor's kingdom. Some thirty years ago, C. P. Lewis spoke insightfully of ‘The French in England before the Norman Conquest.’ Since then, we have come to appreciate that almost all features once associated with Norman rule can be found before 1066, be they Francophone earls, reforming continental prelates, Romanesque architecture, aristocratic castles and towers, or even forms of knight service.

In light of this work, I wish to take the opportunity to turn our attention to the diplomatic record, which has often played second fiddle to other evidence for these years. The last half century has completely transformed our understanding of the relevant documents here. It is now clear that 1066 represents a caesura in documentary culture no more than it does anywhere else. It is equally clear that it did lead to substantial change. My focus in what follows is on the activities and person of Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds (alias Baldwin of Saint-Denis), an extraordinary figure, whose significance has long been noted, yet whose influence on the documentary record has not been traced in any detail.

From an analytic perspective, the study of register is a relatively new development. Most would date the concept of register to the work of the influential music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). He, and others who followed in his footsteps in subsequent decades, treated register as a secondary parameter characterising an essential, primary tonal and formal structure.

Theories of register as an autonomous compositional element only took off with analysts of twentieth-century music. They were responding to the post-tonal notion of pitch-class and interval space. In so doing, they provided a framework that would also prove useful for examining earlier styles of music, from the Renaissance and Baroque to Classical and Romantic eras.

This chapter reviews how different musical theorists working within both traditions have understood register and space. While all of these theorists bring something useful to the analysis of register, each holds only a partial view of the concept. By examining their distinct theoretical frameworks, I show why a more integrative, stylistically nuanced understanding of register is required if we are to fully explore the potential of register and space as a primary compositional resource within music such as Beethoven’s.

The chapter opens with a review of the Schenkerians, the evolution of their ideas on register, and their emphasis on structural hierarchy. This is followed by a look at alternative approaches to register that prioritise registral space and melodic contour. The final section introduces other recent scholars and critics who further enhance our understanding of register and its diverse meanings. The chapter concludes with a call for a more integrated approach to studying register.

In Iceland the authors of sagas were less creators of new material than authoreditors passing on received stories over which they claimed no ownership, and for which they could not be blamed if charged with lying. Towards the end of the twelfth century, storytellers in Iceland came under increasing pressure to be truthful, especially if they claimed responsibility by name: hence the objective (‘classical’) style. By dint of a historicising tradition entering Iceland from Norway in the reign of King Sverrir (1177–1202), readers or audiences began to expect a fidelity to events. Such a burden has been placed on Oddr munkr Snorrason in his preface to the Saga af Óláfi Tryggvasyni, in which he apologises for the king's lack of miracles. Still, he urges his readers, who are the monks and other clergy of Iceland and Norway, to thank God for giving them such an honourable leader to praise:

We have lost a priceless treasure. Arthur Nikisch is dead. The news is difficult to take in. Certainly, he was getting older, but he didn't seem to be ageing. He had a remarkable capacity for self-renewal. He did not diminish as he aged; he just appeared slightly different. We can imagine him dismissing the spectres of illness and death with nothing more than an obliging smile. Now he is gone. Inevitably the clamour for his successor has begun.

What a rare human being this man was; what an irresistibly enchanting artist. There was nothing heroic about him; he was not a fighter, not a confessor, not a silver-tongued diplomat. He was simply himself; and that was sufficient. He carried his artistry within him. If there is a talisman which leading artists pass on to one another down the centuries, then it was passed to Nikisch from the hand of Franz Liszt. Strange magic, strong but also mysterious. There is no-one worthy to receive it today.

There have of course been other conductors both before and alongside Nikisch.