MUCH OF THE philosophy of Wagner's time, and certainly his own, evokes and tries to make manifest a dynamic identity of unity and difference. For Wagner this is the interplay of a shared, primordial necessity with its splintered reflection in individual experience; the first is ungraspable but is present as feeling, the second is present as conscious thought but can never escape the limits of self-consciousness. Neither can stand alone or be reduced to the other. They must be thought together.

It is that vision that dictates the very structure of Wagnerian music drama, which develops a unity-in-difference between poetry and music and between the actions and voices of the characters on stage and a continuously transforming orchestral fabric. These are essentially different reflections of an inexpressible oneness. The web of motivic development does not merely accompany the singers, but neither are the singers reduced to the status of extra color in the instrumental palette or additional threads in the orchestral tapestry. The poles are never merged. Instead, each one interacts with the other.

A majestic, turreted castle surveys the landscape. The camera pans, and a familiar orchestral motif plays out, a magical trail of fairy dust arching above the castle. Wordless it may be, but the audience knows the melody's implied text, “When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.” The Disney logo is immediately recognizable, projecting a fantasy medievalism rooted not only in one of its earliest attempts at a medieval tale – for this is Sleeping Beauty's castle – but also in its lavish use of music. Both castle – and music – are intimately connected too with one of Disney's most lucrative franchises: the Disney Princess brand. With perfectly coiffed blond hair, and in an elegant pink dress, Princess Aurora, Sleeping Beauty herself, has lent much of her own medievalism to the franchise, imbuing it with dancing grace, beautiful song, and a large dose of fantasy. Yet if her medievalism helped create the initial vision of a Disney Princess, then the advent of a new medieval heroine, Scottish Princess Merida from Disney/Pixar's Brave, ushered in a new approach to the type of femininity idolized by the franchise: one rooted in adventure and fiery independence.

In the multifaceted sphere of music, where a ‘consumer’ may attend or participate in concerts, purchase sheet music or accessories, receive music tuition, or acquire a musical instrument, there are potentially considerable overlaps between the people who work in the trade. In eighteenth-century Britain, most professional musicians forged freelance careers: as William Weber noted, in order to maintain a living, ‘a musician had to “undertake” … a variety of enterprises as performer, composer, arranger, and, most important of all, as teacher’. Although the most common forms of employment for professional musicians were as teachers, performers, concert promoters and composers, the subsidiary trades that facilitated these activities – instrument making and maintenance, music printing and selling, etc., – were undertaken as much by these professionals as others.

By the mid-eighteenth century, a growing number of individuals, often referred to as the ‘middling sort’, were able to experience culture more readily than before, that the elite – nobility and gentry – already enjoyed. The increased financial security and resulting gain of leisure time enabled them to experience music on similar terms to the elite: as an audience – attendance at public concerts, opera and theatre – but also as practising amateurs making music at home and in musical clubs and societies. The result was increased sales of printed music and musical instruments and, therefore, the subsidiary trades that served both the concert platform and private music room. In the Midlands, where the geographical spread of employment opportunities was far wider than London, there was a greater diversity in the portfolio of trades and services offered by those serving the communities there.

The Lull before the Storm

The opening years of the twenty-first century brought no sudden change to music in the cathedrals and choral foundations, but rather a continuation of trends set in motion in the previous few decades. The participation of girls, in varying ways, was to spread to virtually every cathedral by 2020; opposition to them virtually disappeared, at least in any formal way. The fear that chapters would see a single mixed-sex treble line as a means of saving money has, so far, not been realized. A few places have gone down that route since 2000, but difficulty in finding sufficient boys has often been the chief cause. For virtually all cathedrals and similar institutions have found their recruitment a continuing challenge in modern times, requiring ever more effort to fill the choirstalls. One institution, Leeds Parish Church (since 2012 Leeds Minster), for long musically a cathedral in all but name, has exemplified the problem in a particularly stark manner. Whereas the church had for over 150 years maintained a large all-male choir with around 30 boys, singing several weekday services in addition to Sundays, by 2000 the organist, Simon Lindley, was struggling to find 14 boys; in 1997 a separate girls’ choir, about a dozen strong in the 11–16 age range, had also been started. But recruitment problems continued, resulting in the abandonment of both boys and girls in 2015 and their replacement by an adult mixed choir of 24, singing just a Thursday Evensong and two Sunday services.

Smetana's Personality

An artist's character is shaped by inherited traits, education, environment, and tradition. Smetana's artistic inclination was grounded in both natural talents and developed skills. Guided by a strong will and a deep sense of responsibility, he is believed—as Helfert suggests—to have inherited his distinctly Czech musical abilities from his mother's family, which included the eighteenth-century composer Jiří Ignác Linek. This innate gift was nurtured early on by his father and devoted mentors, refined through Proksch's structured education, and ultimately inspired by Liszt's profound influence, which oriented Smetana toward the highest aims of contemporary music.

Smetana blended rhythmic and melodic depth, drawing from the rich traditions of both popular and classical Czech music, channeling his work toward the ultimate artist's goal: to construct flawless forms and content that enrich national and modern art. This ambition was not motivated by chauvinism but by an earnest pursuit of truth. From maturity onward, Smetana's conscious dedication to his people permeated his being, driving all his major works.

Czech music had never achieved such a high standard, whether in its national significance or international prominence. Past eras occasionally transcended local horizons, beginning with the Hussite epoch of the fifteenth century. During this time, singing became accessible to the public, transitioning from the domain of the elite (in the form of ecclesiastic and troubadour music) to the collective voice of the people, symbolizing the arrival of religious and national democracy. Though faced with political suppression, it momentarily flourished through resolute conviction.

Introduction

The document presented here is the minute-book of the Justiciary Court of Argyll, established in 1694 as part of a broader Judicial Commission for Pacifying the Highlands. The minutes begin with the court's inaugural sitting on 29 August, and continue unbroken until 1 December. They thus record only the very earliest stages of the court's work, and it is not known for certain whether this activity continued beyond 1694 – although, given that the Highland Commission more generally persisted until around 1705, it seems likely that it must have done in some form, albeit without surviving records.

The minutes are preserved in a slim book, roughly A4 in size and bound in vellum. They occupy the frst seventeen pages of the volume – well below half of the available space – with most of the remaining leaves being blank. This, combined with the appearance in the text of several errors and corrections, suggests that it was the working record of the court, rather than a later fair copy. Apart from a title page, all pages bear Arabic numbering in the top left corner, and the text on each page is indented from the left by approximately two inches. Discounting occasional endorsements written by Archibald Campbell, 10th Earl (and later 1st Duke) of Argyll, there appear to be at least two diferent hands, presumably belonging to William Paton, named as the clerk of court, and James Taylor, the deputy clerk, and both are fairly easily legible, albeit the second boasts generally better-formed letters, as well as a slightly more famboyant style.

Treason seems a strange offering for a mentor's Festschrift. Allowances might be made, however, when the focus is on John Lane, a poet who, more than two hundred years after the completion of the Canterbury Tales, breathes life into a tale Chaucer left unfinished, a tale in which a royal heroine counters treason with prudence. Given Karla Taylor's own attention to “Prudence's hard-fought battle to deter Melibee from revenge on his enemies, by propounding a new vocabulary of public life,” and our stimulating conversations about law and literature, this essay hopes to qualify as a loyal tribute.

John Lane completed his continuation of Chaucer's Squire's Tale c. 1615 and revised it in 1630. Its two versions exist in the Bodleian Library in Douce MS 170 and Ashmole MS 53, respectively, and have been collated and edited by Frederick Furnivall. Lane continues Chaucer's tale by drawing on medieval discourses of prudence as put forth by the Tale of Melibee. Prudence informs the feminine governance embodied by Canace, John Lane's heroine, who reassembles a royal personhood fractured by treason and war. Through her unfailing love and prudence, Canace turns treason into an opportunity for the enthroned king to practice wise governance and consolidate his royal person.

With the rise of the reform papacy, a distinctive vision of papal monarchy and supremacy emerged. Its origins and causes are complex and somewhat obscure, but the age of the reform papacy and papal monarchy stands as distinct and significant. A particular image of the papacy shone increasingly brighter from Rome, permeating Latin Christendom. When the papacy dispatched its legates, these legates had to capture the light of the papacy to position themselves as extensions of the pope. The most pivotal moment for a legate to express his papal identity was during his reception and entry into his province: his adventus.

This study has examined how Anglo-Norman commentators processed this important ceremony, focusing on their receptions, interpretations, and adaptations of the meaning of the legatine adventus within each one's framework and agenda. It has demonstrated the variety with which English commentators approached this topic. This study has also enhanced our understanding of the papacy's perspective on the reception of its legates. Moreover, it has contributed to our comprehension of the intricacy of the adventus as both a performance and a message. Performance, message, and interpretation were intricately interwoven. The study has revealed the anxieties and cares of recipient communities, providing insight into the diverse perspectives surrounding legatine adventus ceremonies. Such insights will enable us, in this conclusion, to peel back some of the layers of the supposed consensus that the legatine adventus was intended to elicit, and to delve into the underlying dynamics.

Introduction

Historically, popular or traditional songs, frequently composed with a didactic purpose and exhibiting aesthetic – thus, literary – characteristics, appear to be a universal phenomenon across cultures. In the geographic, cultural, and linguistic domain of the Crown of Aragon, substantial written evidence attests to the existence of these songs.

The earliest Occitan-Catalan poetry, whether learned or vernacular, exhibits similarities with other Romance lyric traditions in its integration of text and music, often in the form of refrain songs and dances. As a result, it should come as no surprise that it was musicians (minstrels, or joglars in Catalan) who became the primary conveyors of this poetry. Lyric genres from the popular or popularising spectrum (dansa, balada, virelai, etc.) enjoyed prolonged popularity in Catalan-speaking regions.

The medieval popular or popularising Catalan songs that have come down to us were often preserved as marginal manuscript witnesses and not included in courtly chansonniers. Later texts were typically preserved through the efforts of learned authors who collected poetry, incorporating older songs into their own works, usually as refrains. Hence, it has been proposed to classify this body of poetry as ‘courtly subliterature’ instead of ‘popular subliterature,’ as noted by Beltran (2002: 211).

The concept of ‘register’ in these poetic genres, as defined by Paul Zumthor (1972) and Pierre Bec (1977–1978), is crucial. According to them, medieval lyric poetry can be categorised into three distinct registers: aristocratic or courtly, popular, or popularising, and a hybrid form. This classification is based on various aspects such as motifs, rhetorical, lexical, and rhythmic features of the texts.

SEASCAPE

In archaeology and history, we read that the Irish, Scots, Picts, Welsh and of course the English all went to sea in the centuries before Sutton Hoo. Trafc along the Atlantic seaboard from Iberia to Orkney was active from the Neolithic period onwards marking their territories with megalithic monuments.1 The Romans circumnavigated Britain and colonised its most fertile regions (the east and south). In early Christian times the route using the Gulf Stream brought pottery to Britons in the west, and the continental river system brought missionaries across the Channel. The Irish crossed the sea from the west and colonised Cornwall, west Wales, north west Britain and eventually Pictland; Germanic peoples crossed the sea from the east and north east, colonised eastern Britain and made it England.2 So Britain is an island that has hosted at least four maritime nations, Roman, Britons, Irish and English, linked with neighbours and ancestors across seaways with many points of entry, estuaries, frths and bays. They will have encountered the same local conditions of weather, winds and tides as we do, the same sea areas and seasonal hazards (FIG 4.1).

Modern studies suggest that the North Sea has a home-blowing system of seasonal winds, towards England in the spring and towards Scandinavia in the autumn, favouring the Germanic peoples of northwest Europe with journeys westward (FIG 4.2). In the North Sea, the fjords, frths and estuaries were recognised destinations, learned and taught by generations of seafarers up to today.

Next to his responsibility for collecting and organising general claims in prize causes, Bayard was especially entrusted with working on US prize appeals. These appeals did not go to the High Court of Admiralty, but to its superior court, the High Court of Appeals for Prizes, a very different legal body from the first. Whereas the members of the High Court of Admiralty were chosen through a long process of legal training and specialised knowledge (embodied in the Doctors’ Commons microcosm), the members of the appeals court, known as the Lords Commissioners of Appeal (further referred to as the Lords of Appeal), did not require any legal training. Some of the Lords were eminent common law judges, but often, they were simply politicians, for the appeals court consisted of members of the Privy Council. The president of the Privy Council was also president of the Lords of Appeal. Four to six of the Lords of Appeal would meet up about once a week in the winter, generally from 12pm until 3pm, while in the summer they met less frequently and discussed several cases in a single session. Whereas the American Federal Appeals Court would later go on to review its own cases, the final decree of the Lords of Appeal was just that: final. There does not seem to have been a single case in which it reviewed one of its own decisions. The decrees they issued were simple and to the point. Most final judgments remain simple statements without explanation, declaring the what and not the why.

Journalist and cronista J. M. Servin (1962–) observed in 2013 that the nota roja or tabloid crime news has been Mexico's dominant metanarrative since the mid-twentieth century. He decried the literary establishment's esteem for ‘la “Gran Muerte” de la literatura que gana premios y prestigios’ (the ‘Great Death’ in the literature that wins prizes and acclamations), depicting Mexican death as the fatal fruit of ancestral ritual, and something greater than the banal, everyday violence that it truly is: ‘la muerte intempestiva, reemplazable por otra en el dia con dia del reporte necrologico’ (untimely death, interchangeable with any other in the day-to-day death notices). The antithesis of investigative journalism, the nota roja represents violent, untimely death as the inevitable consequence of personal recklessness or individual misfortune, and thus a quasi-didactic spectacle for everyday consumption. The ‘mystery’ surrounding murder (whether of students in Tlatelolco or Ayotzinapa, women in Ciudad Juarez, or migrants in Tamaulipas) derives from a rhetoric of abstraction, wherein words are spoken and investigations carried out with little attachment to the concrete instance or authorship of a given crime. Mexico's most famous fictional detective, Hector Belascoaran Shayne, wonders if it is worth pursuing enlightenment ‘en un pais donde es nota roja las declaraciones del diputado, nota roja las frases del secretario de Gobernacion, […] nota roja los comentarios del entrenador del Cruz Azul’ (in a country where the congressman's statements are a nota roja, a nota roja the Interior Secretary's communications, […] a nota roja the comments of Cruz Azul's trainer).