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A poignant, compelling and clear-eyed memoir of a life in music, with the dogged pursuit of composing at its center.
Perhaps no art form has ever splintered into as many factions, genres, languages, philosophies, and mutually exclusive audiences as the art of music did in the mid-twentieth century.
Allen Shawn's memoir fascinatingly evokes this tumultuous time, while weaving together his art and his life, hinting at their unexpected and sometimes paradoxical interconnections.
Shawn grew up in an atmosphere of cultural privilege in New York City, the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn. An instinctive composing prodigy at age ten, it took him until the age of thirty to compose music he was proud of.
Shawn sketches his childhood and long apprenticeship, his experiences composing for theater, dance, and concert hall, his forty years as a teacher at Bennington College, and his unexpected emergence as a writer. The book balances an account of his musical evolution, ups and downs, and life choices, offering glimpses into family life and of the many people with whom he interacted, including Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Petit, Jacques-Louis Monod, J. D. Salinger, John Updike, Benny Goodman, Louis Malle, and Vivian Fine.
Along the way, Shawn offers reflections on such issues as social class, aging, loneliness, politics, and music education. In the Realm of Tones: A Composer's Memoir is a unique and touching account of one individual's internal search for self-expression and self-understanding, and of his effort to construct a life around it.
Explores the dynamics of saints' work as represented by their hagiographers.
The lives of many early medieval saints show them working with their hands. Radegund cooks in the kitchen, carries firewood, and cleans privies; Fiacre cultivates a garden; Brigid milks cows and makes cheese; Dunstan shapes metal and constructs buildings. Other saints raise crops, herd cattle, write books, or weave cloth. Equally at home in garden, workshop, and scriptorium, these saints work alongside other people, interacting regularly with livestock, materials, and the land: miracles and other supernatural events are embedded in the habitual, everyday routines of the saints' own communities. Saints exemplify the balance between productive, creative work and the toil or effort required to accompany it, sometimes aligned with penitential labour. But more often, the saints celebrate work as a rewarding result of divine gift, human ingenuity and communal cooperation.
This book examines the representation of work - from arable and pastoral agriculture to textile arts and caretaking - in the vitae of saints who lived in Ireland, Britain, and Francia between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Bringing together close readings of these texts, evidence from archaeology, and anthropological approaches to material culture, it argues that through such work, saints showed others how to survive, thrive, and build a world that promised both physical security and spiritual rewards.
This book presents the second part of William Porlond's Brewers' Book, 1429-40. It provides a fascinating glimpse of this craft and fraternity, and the gaining of the company's Royal charter in 1438.
This is the second part of William Porlond's Brewers' Book, for the years 1429-40, until the clerk's death. After a gap, his records resumed, listing income, expenditure, entries to the freedom of the craft, to the fraternity and matters concerning the Brewers of London. Many payments were recorded in pursuit of the Brewers' Royal charter, which King Henry VI granted in 1438. Costs for making the commonalty seal were also recorded. At this time of change, when beer, rather than ale, was being made and sold in London, the clerk questioned the virtue of beer. He recorded the annual feasts, some important guests, and the purchase and distribution of livery cloth. The clerk gave insight into national events, with lists of the Brewers' contributions towards waging soldiers in Calais. Inventories of the goods of three Brewers' almsmen give glimpses of their lives. Porlond's records, kept mostly in English in this part of the book, illustrate the developing role of the company clerk.
Hedging, not balancing or bandwagoning, is the modal behavior of the non-great powers under uncertainty. Despite its prevalence as a state alignment choice, hedging has remained an undertheorized subject in the study of international relations. This Element presents one of the first theoretical works on strategic hedging in world politics. Tracing the multidisciplinary roots of hedging as an instinctive human behavior, I contend that sovereign actors hedge in ways similar to commodity traders, farmers, fund managers, academic writers, politicians, and individuals in competitive organizations under conditions of high-stakes and high-uncertainties. I then develop a two-level theoretical framework to explain when, how and why states hedge, rather than balance or bandwagon. Using selected Indo-Pacific countries as empirical cases, I conclude that while structural-level conditions largely explain the shifts in alignment decisions (e.g., from non-hedging to hedging, or vice versa), domestic factors explain the variations in hedging choices.
An in-depth overview of Kent's economy, society and politics, and their relationship with Kent's environs over two centuries.
Kent is surrounded by water on three sides, close to both the European continent and London: geography that has influenced those who have lived there in countless ways. This book explores their history in this setting from the mid-fifteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, emphasising Kent's deep connection with Europe. Its chapters, which draw on a wide range of local and national sources, primarily centre on maritime affairs, reflecting the historical and ongoing significance of the sea to the region's inhabitants. These include a bold new description of Kent at the end of the Middle Ages and a reconstruction of the county's early modern maritime trade, including its merchants, both native and foreign, the commodities traded, as well as the impact of migration. An in-depth study also provides quantitative analyses of shipping and of the lives and careers of the shipboard community.
Furthermore, there is a detailed examination of the military community of Kent, with a particular focus on the county's coastal fortifications and a chapter on predatory maritime activities in adjacent waters. Overall, the book puts forward the findings of deep research that connects Kent's economy, society and politics with its environs over a long period. As such, it exemplifies how future county studies might be composed.
Why did Alfonso X of Castile-Leon-Galicia relentlessly pursue his claims to the imperial thrones of the Holy Roman Empire and the Iberian 'empire', despite the high costs and probability of failure?
This book examines how the concept of imperium shapes the structure and ideology of the Estoria de España, the first major history of Spain in the vernacular, written under Alfonso's patronage. Through a detailed analysis of its Roman section, it explores how Alfonso's scriptorium translated, adapted, and expanded sources to bolster his imperial claim. More than a chronicle, the Estoria served as propaganda, reinforcing Alfonso's legitimacy by challenging papal authority in imperial elections and appealing to both the Castilian-Leonese nobility-whose financial support was crucial-and other Iberian monarchs.
Alfonso's imperial vision drew not only on the Imperium Hispanicum of his father, Fernando III, but also on his Staufen lineage through his mother, Beatriz of Swabia, whose ties to the Holy Roman Empire likely influenced the historiographical models of the Estoria. By blending Iberian and European traditions, Alfonso positioned Castile as heir to both the Roman and Hohenstaufen legacies, setting a new standard for Iberian historiography that endured for centuries.
The first modern English translation of Hugh of Rhuddlan's Ipomedon.
The Anglo-Norman Ipomedon, composed in the late twelfth century by Hugh of Rhuddlan, is a witty, notoriously scabrous romance, set in the Mediterranean. In a version of the Fair Unknown motif, the work's eponymous hero, the son of the king of Apulia, falls in love with the queen of Calabria, conceals his identity and serves in her retinue. He undertakes a number of adventures, including participating in a three-day tournament, each day under different colours, before revealing his true identity and marrying her. Alert to the conventions of Arthurian romance from which it pointedly takes ironic distance, Ipomedon invokes the Continental romans d'antiquité in its protagonists' names and in its surprising claim to be the source material for the chronologically earlier Roman de Thèbes. It was popular amongst its contemporary readers, being translated later into three different Middle English versions.
This book offers the first modern English translation; it also provides explanatory notes, and a full introduction, discussing the author, its audience, dating, sources and analogues, themes, humour and narrative style. It will make this important text, of great interest to medieval romance studies, available to a wider audience.
Antibiotics are frequently prescribed for acute sinusitis despite national guidelines recommending antibiotics only if specific symptom criteria are met. We aimed to define the proportion of acute sinusitis encounters meeting criteria for antibiotic prescribing, characterize prescribing practices, and identify factors associated with guideline-discordant prescribing.
Design:
This retrospective cohort study included 1,000 randomly selected adult ambulatory encounters with a primary diagnosis of acute sinusitis between January 1, 2024 and March 31, 2024. Encounter notes were reviewed for appropriate antibiotic prescribing criteria as per national guidelines. Encounters were evaluated for drug selection and duration concordance based on local guidelines. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to identify predictors of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing.
Setting:
Emergency departments, urgent care centers, and primary care clinics.
Results:
Antibiotic prescribing criteria were met for 67.6% of included encounters. Antibiotics were prescribed in 93.5% of encounters that met prescribing criteria, and 80.2% of encounters that did not. Both drug selection and duration were guideline-concordant in 49.2% of total encounters. On multivariable analysis, predictors of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing included cough (OR 2.15, 95% CI 1.08–4.29; P = 0.03) and symptom duration between 7 and 9 days (compared to <6 days; OR 7.70, 95% CI 3.24–18.31; P < 0.001). Electronic encounters were associated with lower odds of prescribing compared to in-person encounters (OR 0.03, 95% CI 0.01–0.09; P < 0.001).
Conclusions:
Most encounters for acute sinusitis result in an antibiotic prescription, despite prescribing criteria not being met. These findings may aid antimicrobial stewardship programs in benchmarking and optimizing antibiotic prescribing for acute sinusitis.
Early identification of familial hypercholesterolaemia is critical to prevent long-term cardiovascular complications. This study assessed diagnostic features and age at diagnosis in children with familial hypercholesterolaemia to identify factors influencing the diagnostic process and improve screening strategies.
Methods:
A retrospective review was conducted on 129 paediatric patients with familial hypercholesterolaemia. Data on demographics, family history, clinical findings, lipid levels, and initial reasons for lipid testing were collected.
Results:
Of 129 patients, 20.2% had homozygous and 79.8% had heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia. Diagnostic delay occurred in 82.9%, with a median of 6.8 years. The most common reason for lipid testing was incidental detection (29.5%), followed by clinical symptoms (23.2%). No significant association was found between testing reasons and age at diagnosis, diagnostic delay, duration of delay, or familial risk factors. Patients with parental hypercholesterolaemia had longer diagnostic delays (7.03 ± 3.54 vs. 4.18 ± 2.70 years, p = 0.016). No differences were observed in age at diagnosis or delay between patients with and without familial risk factors or clinical findings.
Conclusion:
The findings reveal significant diagnostic delays in paediatric familial hypercholesterolaemia, with most cases being diagnosed incidentally rather than through structured screening. There is a pressing need for systematic, context-specific screening strategies to improve early detection and reduce long-term cardiovascular risk.
Composing the Island, the September 2016 festival of twenty-seven concerts over nineteen days, was a pretty hefty event by any measure. And it was not even designed to celebrate the full history of composition in Ireland, just the works of the last hundred years… Yet the tradition of music it salutes has long had in Ireland a Cinderella-like position, an invisibility that can sometimes seem like the airbrushing or photoshopping into non-existence of a major art form.
—Michael Dervan, Foreword to The Invisible Art: A Century of Music in Ireland, 1916–2016 (Dublin: New Island, 2016) xii.
We must find an explanation as to why the majority of Irish people seem to think they have no history of classical music.
—Axel Klein, ‘No State for Music’, in Dervan (ed.), The Invisible Art, p. 48.
From the ‘hidden Ireland’ of an ‘unreclaimed and fugitive’ musical tradition as this was perceived in the early nineteenth century to the ‘invisible art’ disclosed in a major series of concerts given at the National Concert Hall in Dublin in 2016 suggests a dispiriting trajectory. To many, it may seem that in the interim we have exchanged one ‘hidden Ireland’ for another. This is a route map, nevertheless, that is borne out by the historiography examined in this book.
Chapter 3 examines how the Economist Mental Model (EMM) influenced voting behavior in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Using British Election Study data, the chapter shows that individuals with higher economic knowledge – a proxy for the EMM – were 11 percentage points more likely to vote than those with lower economic knowledge – a proxy for Alternative Mental Models. The effect of economic knowledge on Brexit preferences is comparable in size to established predictors like income and regional exposure to globalization, underscoring its importance. Robustness checks confirm the relationship remains strong after accounting for media consumption patterns. Moreover, EMM-oriented individuals also favor other welfare-enhancing policies, such as free trade and immigration, yet do not differ from others on noneconomic social issues like LGBTQ+ rights. Thus, economic reasoning specifically shapes economic policy preferences, rather than reflecting broader ideological leanings.
Don Giovanni has finally been revived [24, 28, and 30 April], played complete, and very well received. Barroilhet no longer goes ah! In the first two performances the trio of masks was encored, as was Don Giovanni's aria in the third. There's nothing to say about that except that it's very good!
It is good indeed that Don Giovanni, having been promised so many times, has been played, as it's a masterpiece; we can also be glad about the reception it's had from the public, as the performance, although better than what it generally was in the last performances before the revival, was not absolutely beyond criticism and was noticeably inaccurate in several respects. It's easy to find examples. Mozart's orchestration and melodies have been altered. Trombones have been added in several places, with moderation, but wrongly, since it is to misunderstand the intention and thought of the composer to treat this instrument as we do now. Mozart was sparing in his use of trombones, reserving them exclusively for scenes of terror and to accompany the funereal voice of the Commendatore. In any case, my main point is to ask: Who has the right to correct such a master? What composer today is placed so high that he dares give an orchestration lesson to Mozart and treat him de haut en bas?
Barroilhet has, it's true, given up his favourite interjection, but certainly not a host of extremely irritating decorations with which he believes he is rejuvenating melodies that are a thousand times fresher than the shrivelled grace notes daily imported from Italy.
Chapter 2 takes as its point of departure angelology, which provides the theological context for examining the devil before, during, and after his fall. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa drew on traditions of interpretation that understood scripture as speaking of one adversary, an angel – Satan, Lucifer, serpent, and devil – who moves across Testaments, Old and New. While the three theologians agree on who the devil is – a fallen angel – they are not of one mind on how he came to fall from the near presence of God, his defeat, his continued existence, or his ultimate end. By interrogating the nature and purpose of angels, this chapter identifies how the Cappadocians construe the devil as a philosophical, theological, and spiritual problem.
The voyages of Columbus and his successors linked the two hemispheres, and this chapter surveys the positive and negative biological, cultural, and social consequences of this “Columbian Exchange.” Among these were the spread of disease and the transfer of plants, animals, and consumer goods, along with economic changes that led to social protests, revolts, warfare, and forced migrations in an increasingly interdependent world. Religious transformations, including the Protestant and Catholic Reformations and the creation of Sikhism, were interwoven with all of these developments, as religions, too, migrated and morphed. New urban social settings and cultural institutions, such as coffee and tea houses, theatres, and salons, offered men—and sometimes women—opportunities for entertainment, sociability, consumption, and the exchange of ideas, but the increasing contacts among peoples also resulted in more rigid notions of human difference.
Within a few short years, Paul Cullen systematically remade the Irish Catholic hierachy through a ruthless application of his influence in Rome. This chapter traces how he did so, where, and with what consequences, before turning to the campaign of parish missions that effectively embedded Tridentine Catholicism across Ireland.
Berlioz's distaste for rules also shows for what he castigates as ‘formules’, patterns taken off the shelf with no thought for relevance or beauty. In contrast, he has sympathy for composers who plough their own furrow, even if their execution is imperfect. Grétry's four-act opera Zémire et Azor, on a verse libretto by Jean-François Marmontel, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique on December 16, 1771; the story is a version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. The run reviewed by Berlioz began on 29 June.
Attempts to restore old compositions to the repertoire of the Opéra- Comique, like the one I’m reviewing today, have so far been successful. Current audiences have never shown a lack of respect for those of the early years of the century by reacting against works that were well received by the previous generation. That's because these works, true masterpieces in some respects, demonstrate expressive qualities unaffected by time: forms change, proportions grow, artistic means become more numerous and powerful, and this necessarily produces a more or less obvious difference between the musical products of varying epochs. This difference does not always work to the advantage of new pieces, especially when it comes to comparing them with some past master whose style is free of formulas. What we call musically ‘old’ in the negative sense of the word seems old only because of formulas. This is regularly proved by experience. Several times I’ve showed first-rate musicians an aria from Gluck's Telemaco (an Italian opera he wrote long before his French ones) without revealing the composer's name; and there's not one of them who didn't take this aria for a fine excerpt from some modern opera he didn't know.
The only agent's papers found were those of Richard Drakeford, but as these were so nearly contemporaneous and give a flavour of the many and varied elements of accounting required, the first five pages of an example are displayed here.
The accounts were entered in a hard-backed ledger, with a very formal title:
St Pierre Accounts
Between W&B Jasper
Mr Trevanion
and myself
1744
An Account of goods delivered to the Buyers of La St Pierre sold at Gosport by Publick Sale the 1st September 1744 taken by his Majesties Ship the Kinsale Robert Young Esq. Commander
William and Benjamin Vaughan Brokers
On the cover of the ledger was recorded the prices:
Price of indigo £4 1s per hundredweight; coffee £6 11s or £6 10s per hundredweight; sugar 5s per pound; cotton 16p per pound
• The cargo being sold here was sugar, coffee and indigo
• The quantities were hundredweights, quarters and pounds, where 112 pounds made 1 hundredweight, and 28 pounds made 1 quarter • A pipe was a measure of wine, holding two hogsheads or 125 gallons • Casks held liquid or solid goods
• ‘Tare’ indicates the weight of the barrel as opposed to its contents
• The agent charged 2½ per cent on the value of every sale • The number of dealers, agents and associates is evidence of the wide network of businesses involved in trade
• The sale of the cargo took place on 1 September, with payment for the different elements coming in over subsequent weeks
Data convey information about greenhouse gas emissions, financial flows, and climate impacts. Such information is used to give meaning to the unfolding climate crisis and global efforts to respond to it. Moreover, data are assumed to increase transparency and accountability (see Gupta and van Asselt 2019), and related reporting and disclosure mechanisms work to facilitate continuous engagement with relevant governance fora and processes (Heyvaert 2018, 110–111). Importantly, in addition to supporting meaningmaking, transparency, accountability, and engagement, data themselves have emerged as a central means of climate change governance. They have become operational elements of institutionalized mobilization, organizing, and steering. At the global level, the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Secretariat, for example, relies on data to strategically structure governance processes, animate implementation activity, and coordinate between actor groups (Mai and Elsässer 2022), and at the transnational level, cross-border climate governance initiatives have begun to collect local climate data to position cities as central players in climate change governance (Mai 2024). Thus, rather than merely supporting or being the outputs of governance processes, data, in a very real sense, do governing work. They constitute and restructure relations between actors, create and sustain novel forms of power and authority, and disrupt existing modes of claiming legitimacy (see Johns 2021). This chapter refers to such governing work as the ‘datafication’ of climate change governance. As data transform ‘what counts as known, probable, certain, and in the process’ (Hong 2020, 1), they powerfully reconfigure existing and give rise to alternative modalities for governing.