Search results for ""boydell press""

Books define the character of a publishing house better than any account of its business transactions or its organisation. This selection of forty books to mark the fortieth anniversary of Boydell & Brewer reflects the evolution of the company and the changing focus of its activities. It began as the Boydell Press, a very small and very general operation and is now a group of primarily academic imprints. The story of the company's progress and developmentis told through the books, with a strong emphasis on authors and supporters and the occasions linked to the books. Reading Beowulf by firelight on Mound One at Sutton Hoo on an October evening; holding a tournament on the castlemeadow at Framlingham; renting Orford castle for the day; giving the Pepys Dinner in association with Magdalene College - all these add colour to the routine business of publishing. But there is a more serious side. During the 1970s and 1980s, dissatisfaction with the inflexibility of academic publishing led scholars and independent publishers to set up companies designed to serve the needs of their specialised fields. Four such firms, D.S. Brewer, Tamesis, Camden House and James Currey, together with the University of Rochester Press (created in collaboration with the University) make up the Boydell & Brewer Group of today.

Read more less

This is a book to appeal to a wide range of readers - pianists of every level from beginner to professional, piano teachers, musicians of all kinds, and the broader community of music-lovers. In Speaking the Piano, renowned pianist Susan Tomes turns her attention to teaching and learning. Teaching music encompasses everything from putting a drum in a child's hands to helping an accomplished musician unlock the meaning and spirit of the classics. At every stage, some fundamental issues keep surfacing. In this wide-ranging book, Susan Tomes reflects on how her own experience as a learner, in different genres from classical to jazz, hasinfluenced her approach to teaching. She tells us how her performing career has given her insight into what young performers need to know, and how discussions with students have fed into her own practice. She describes the brilliant and intriguing teachers whose masterclasses opened her ears to the many ways in which music can be brought alive and communicated. This is a book to appeal to a wide range of readers - pianists of every level from beginnerto professional, piano teachers, musicians of all kinds, and the broader community of music-lovers. In a passionate contribution to the ongoing debate about the place of music in education, Susan Tomes argues that this most inspiring of arts can play a unique role in personal development. This is a lovely, wise, elegantly written book, filled with tips and anecdotes which could be helpful and encouraging for any pianist, whether a beginner or aprofessional. Above all it is a book in which one senses constantly the deep love the author has for music itself, for its ability to inspire, touch and, indeed, change lives. STEPHEN HOUGH SUSAN TOMES is a multi-award-winning pianist whose career encompasses solo, duo and chamber music playing; she has been at the heart of the internationally admired ensembles Domus, the Gaudier Ensemble and the Florestan Trio. Her lecture-recitals have enabled many listeners to engage with the classics on a new level. She is the author of four acclaimed books about performance: Beyond the Notes (Boydell Press 2004), A Musician's Alphabet (Faber, 2006), Out of Silence (Boydell Press, 2010), and Sleeping in Temples (Boydell Press, 2014).

Read more less

Reviewing the first volume in this series, Christopher Allmand, writing in English Historical Review, said: `Once again, a volume of papers published by the Boydell Press has made a useful interdisciplinary contribution toan important and difficult subject. Historians may read this book with profit.' But not only historians, for the contributions to these volumes are wide-ranging, and cover all aspects of culture in the middle ages, with a strong emphasis on continental literature.

Read more less

Revealing unpublished interviews with John Cage and some of his closest colleagues, including Virgil Thomson, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pauline Oliveros, Merce Cunningham, and David Tudor. John Cage, one of America's most renowned composers from the 1940s until his death in 1992, was also a much-admired writer and artist, and a uniquely attractive personality able to present his ideas engagingly wherever he went. In CageTalk: Dialogues with and about John Cage, Peter Dickinson showcases a collection of vividly revealing and unpublished interviews given by Cage in the late 1980s for a BBC Radio 3 documentary. For this paperback edition, Dickinson presents a new preface noting developments in Cage criticism since the book's publication in 2006, updated comments from several of the original interviewees, and a new interview with Christian Wolff. CageTalk also features earlier BBC interviews with Cage, including ones by renowned literary critic Frank Kermode and art critic David Sylvester. In addition, there are discussions of Cage with Bonnie Bird, Earle Brown, Merce Cunningham,Minna Lederman, Otto Luening, Jackson Mac Low, Peadar Mercier, Pauline Oliveros, John Rockwell, Kurt Schwertsik, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Virgil Thomson, David Tudor, LaMonte Young, and Paul Zukovsky. Most of these interviews weregiven to Peter Dickinson but there are others in which with Rebecca Boyle, Anthony Cheevers, Michael Oliver, and Roger Smalley were the interviewers. Peter Dickinson, British composer and pianist, is Emeritus Professor,University of Keele and University of London, and has written or edited several books about twentieth-century music, including Copland Connotations [Boydell Press, 2002] and The Music of Lennox Berkeley [Boydell Press, 2003].

Read more less

Brings to life the day-to-day details of staging the premiere of one of the most iconic works of Western classical music. The Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven with its final choral movement is one of the iconic works of Western classical music. And yet, the story never fully told concerns the months leading to the symphony's world premiere in Vienna on 7 May and repeat performance on 23 May 1824. In his new book, Theodore Albrecht brings to life the day-to-day details that it took to stage that premiere. It's a story of negotiating for performance halls and performers' payments, of hand-copying legible scores and individual parts for over 120 performers, of finding financiers, as well as space and time for rehearsals. Importantly, it is also a story of the relationship between Beethoven and the musicians who performed this symphonic masterpiece. In fact, as the maddening rehearsal schedule towards the symphony's premiere shows, it transpires that many passages of the Ninth have been tailored to specific orchestral players. Many modern-day musicians will recognize familiar situations in rehearsals, many scholars and students will relish unprecedented new detail. All this comes to the fore by reconstructing the story drawing on the (almost) deaf composer's Conversation Books which Beethoven had been using since 1818. In the performance story of the Ninth Symphony's premiere, Albrecht makes full use of these invaluable documents, which are now being translated for the first time into English in a series of 12 volumes published by the Boydell Press. THEODORE ALBRECHT, Professor Emeritus of Music at Kent State University, Ohio, is an award-winning Beethoven scholar. He has authored many important articles on the composer and is the editor of Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence (1996) as well as translator and editor of Beethoven's Conversation Books (Boydell Press).

Read more less

A revised and enlarged paperback edition to mark the centenary of the much-loved singer's birth. In 1953, at the age of 41, Kathleen Ferrier, England's greatest lyric contralto, lost her courageous battle with breast cancer. Her huge appeal to a wide audience - in concerts, on records, on the radio and in the opera house - has ensured her name endures to this day, despite a career which lasted barely ten years. In just half that time, this former telephone exchange operator was singing on stage at Covent Garden, before royalty at private parties, andat New York's Carnegie Hall. This collection of letters and twelve years of her personal diaries was first published by Boydell Press in 2003. Here, an enlarged paperback edition contains a new chapter revealing her growingimportance to the BBC, an additional 90 letters, together with much revised material and a selection of moving tributes. Published to mark the centenary of her birth in 1912, the book, of more than 400 letters, provides a vivid picture of a life which illuminated the war and post-war years of austerity and hardship. Kathleen Ferrier was surely fun to know. Her personality was a mix of extreme modesty and self-determined ambition, topped with a mischievously blunt sense of earthy Lancastrian humour. She is known for her glorious voice, but through the pages of these fascinating letters and diaries we get to meet the real person. DR CHRISTOPHER FIFIELD is a conductor, music historian, lecturer and broadcaster. He is the biographer of Max Bruch [Boydell Press 2005] and conductor Hans Richter, and the author of a history of the music agents Ibbs & Tillett.

Read more less

Collected together for the first time in one volume are the most important critical study of Pelagius to date and a selection of his letters. Collected together for the first time in one volume are the most important critical study of Pelagius to date, together with a selection of his letters. Arriving in Rome in the late 4th century, Pelagius soon acquired a considerable reputation as a reformer and spiritual adviser. In Palestine he became embroiled with Jerome and later with Augustine who had been alerted to the Pelagian threat to orthodox doctrine. Professor Rees here re-examines the evidence for the Pelagian controversy. The second part of the book consists of Pelagius' letters, which provide the clearest and most succinct statements of Pelagian theology, but few of which have ever been translated into English before. Reissue; first published in two volumes as Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic and The Letters of Pelagius and his Followers (The Boydell Press, 1991).

Read more less

An important contribution to the understanding of twentieth-century Anglicanism and evangelicalism This volume makes a considerable contribution to the understanding of twentieth-century Anglicanism and evangelicalism. It includes an expansive introduction which both engages with recent scholarship and challenges existing narratives. The book locates the diverse Anglican evangelical movement in the broader fields of the history of English Christianity and evangelical globalisation. Contributors argue that evangelicals often engaged constructively with the wider Church of England, long before the 1967 Keele Congress, and displayed a greater internal party unity than has previously been supposed. Other significant themes include the rise of various 'neo-evangelicalisms', charismaticism, lay leadership, changing conceptions of national identity, and the importance of generational shifts. The volume also provides an analysis of major organisations, conferences and networks, including the Keswick Convention, Islington Conference and Nationwide Festival of Light. ANDREW ATHERSTONE is tutor in history and doctrine, and Latimer research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. JOHN MAIDEN is lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at the Open University. He is author of National Religion and the Prayer Book Controversy, 1927-1928 (The Boydell Press, 2009).

Read more less

Francis Cheetham's classic survey of English medieval alabasters includes a richly illustrated catalogue of the Victoria and Albert Museum's unparalleled collection. English alabasters represent a unique contribution to medieval art. Less sophisticated, perhaps, than other contemporary forms of religious art, they were a neglected area of study until this volume was first published in 1984. Stories from the New Testament and The Golden Legend were the most favoured subjects, and the numerous examples that survive in churches and museums throughout Europe attest to their wide and enduring appeal. FrancisCheetham examines here all aspects of their production and demonstrates how the panels and altarpieces can aid our understanding of life and devotional practice in medieval times. At the heart of this fascinating study is arichly illustrated catalogue of the 260 examples in the collection of London's Victoria and Albert Museum: a collection "so comprehensive that it would be possible to write a survey of the subject almost without recourse to pieces elsewhere," as Sir Roy Strong notes in his Foreword. Their division into subject categories is an invaluable aid to identification and classification. The late Francis Cheetham was an acknowledged expert on medieval English alabasters, and this reissue of his classic work will be welcomed by historians, art historians, collectors and dealers alike, taking its place alongside his Alabaster Images of Medieval England which was published by the Boydell Press in 2003.

Read more less

A survey of a wide range of new research on many aspects of life at sea in the early modern period. Maritime social history is a relatively young and fertile field, with many new research findings being discovered on a wide range of aspects of the subject. This book, together with its companion volume The Social History of English Seamen, 1485-1649 (The Boydell Press, 2011), pulls together and makes accessible this large body of research work. Subjects covered include life at sea in different parts of the period for both officers and seamen, in both the navy and in merchant ships; piracy and privateering; health, health care and disability; seamen's food; homosexuality afloat; and the role of women at sea and on land. Written by leading experts in their field, the volumesoffer a nuanced portrait of seafarers' existence as well as an overview of the current state of the historiography. CHERYL A. FURY is Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John campus) and a Fellow of the Gregg Centre for War and Society. Contributors: J.D. ALSOP, JOHN APPLEBY, JEREMY BLACK, B. R. BURG, BERNARD CAPP, PETER EARLE, CHERYL A. FURY, MARGARETTE LINCOLN, DAVID MCLEAN, N. A. M. RODGER, DAVID STARKEY

Read more less

A pathbreaking, new intellectual biography of the composer and conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) has entered the historical memory as a renowned interpreter of the canon of Austro-German musical masterworks. His extensive legacy of recorded performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Wagneris widely regarded as unsurpassed. Yet more than sixty years after his death he remains a controversial figure: the complexities and equivocacy of his high-profile position within the Third Reich still cast a long shadow over hisreputation. This book builds an intellectual biography of Furtwängler, probing this ambiguity, through a critical examination of his extensive series of essays, addresses and symphonies. It traces the development of his thought from its foundations in late nineteenth-century traditions of Bildung and associated discourses of conservative-minded nationalism, through the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic and the cultural and moral dilemmasof the Nazi period, to the post-World War II years of Bundesrepublik reconstruction, in which the beleaguered idealist found himself adrift in an alien cultural environment overshadowed by the unfolding narrative of the Nazi holocaust. The book will be of interest not only to music scholars but to cultural and intellectual historians as well. ROGER ALLEN is a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford and author of Richard Wagner's Beethoven (1870): A New Translation (Boydell Press, 2014)

Read more less

A study of the first great global stock market crash and and its impact on the peripheries of the British state In late September 1720 the South Sea bubble burst. The collapse of the South Sea Company's share price caused the first great British stock market crash, the repercussions of which were felt far beyond the City of London. PatrickWalsh's book traces for the first time the impact of the rise and fall of the South Sea bubble on the peripheries of the British state. Its primary focus is on Ireland, but Irish developments are placed within a comparative context, with special attention paid to Scotland. Drawing on an impressive array of evidence, including bank ledgers, private correspondence, pamphlets, newspapers, and contemporary literary sources, this book examines not only investment in London but also the impact of the bubble on the fate of non-metropolitan projects in the 'South Sea Year', notably the failed project for an Irish national bank. Central to the book is the lived experience of the bubble and the wider financial revolution. The stories of individual investors - their strategies, speculations, aspirations, gains, losses and misunderstandings - are employed to create a new, more personal narrative of the momentousevents of 1720, showing how they impacted on the lives of the inhabitants of early eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. Patrick Walsh is Irish Research Council CARA Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin. He is the author of The Making of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy: The Life of William Conolly, 1662-1729 (Boydell Press, 2010).

Read more less

A comprehensive overview of the subject, demonstrating that the maritime aspects of the civil wars were much more important than has hitherto been acknowledged. NOMINATED FOR THE MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD! The civil wars in England, Scotland and Ireland in the period 1638-1653 are usually viewed from the perspective of land warfare. This book, on the other hand, presents a comprehensive overview of the wars from a maritime perspective. It considers the structure, organisation and manning of the parliamentarian, royalist, and Irish confederate navies, discussing how these changed overthe course of the wars. It also traces the development of the wars at sea, showing that the initial opting for parliament by seamen and officers in 1642 was a crucial development, as was the mutiny and defection of part of the parliamentarian navy in 1648. Moving beyond this it examines the nature of maritime warfare, including coastal sieges, the securing of major ports for parliament, the attempts by royalists to ship arms and other supplies from continental Europe, commerce raiding, and the transportation of armies and their supporters in the invasions of Scotland and Ireland. Overall the book demonstrates that the war at sea was an integral and important part of these dramatic conflicts. RICHARD J. BLAKEMORE is a Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World at the University of Reading. ELAINE MURPHY is a Lecturer in Maritime/Naval History at the University of Plymouth and author of Ireland and the War at Sea, 1641-1653 (Boydell Press, 2012).

Read more less

An account of poor relief in Guernsey from the Reformation to the twenty-first century, incorporating a detailed case-study of the St Peter Port workhouse and an outline of the development of Guernsey's modern social security system. This book, based on extensive original research, provides an account of parochial poor relief in Guernsey from the Reformation to the twenty-first century, incorporating a detailed case-study of the parochial workhouse in the townof St Peter Port, and an outline of the development of Guernsey's modern social security system from its beginnings in the 1920s to the present day. Guernsey has had throughout much of its history a disproportionately large population for its size: in the early eighteenth century St Peter Port was on a par with English county towns such as Warwick and Lincoln. Moreover, since Guernsey was outside the jurisdiction of the Westminster Parliament and retainedcultural affinities with France, the island developed its own social welfare regime which was closer, in some respects, to continental regimes than it was to the English Poor Law model. The differing nature of welfare regimes, how they arose and and how they differ is a major focus of interest amongst historians of social welfare; besides being a fascinating local study, the book has much to contribute to the wider history of social welfare in Britain andEurope. Rose-Marie Crossan completed her doctorate at the University of Leicester and is the author of Guernsey, 1814-1914: Migration and Modernisation (The Boydell Press, 2007). .

Read more less

A study of law, wrongdoing and justice as conceived in the minds of the ordinary people of England and Wales from the later eighteenth century to the First World War. Shortlisted for the 2015 Katharine Briggs Award This is a study of law, wrongdoing and justice as conceived in the minds of the ordinary people of England and Wales from the later eighteenth century to the First World War. Official justice was to become increasingly centralised with declining traditional courts, emerging professional policing and a new prison estate. However, popular concepts of what was, or should be, contained within the law were often at variance with its formal written content. Communities continued to hold mock courts, stage shaming processions and burn effigies of wrongdoers. The author investigates those justice rituals, the actors, the victims andthe offences that occasioned them. He also considers the role such practices played in resistive communities trying to preserve their identity and assert their independence. Finally, whilst documenting the decline of popular justice traditions this book demonstrates that they were nevertheless important in bequeathing a powerful set of symbols and practices to the nascent labour movement. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of legalhistory and criminal justice as well as social and cultural history in what could be considered a very long nineteenth century. Stephen Banks is an associate professor in criminal law, criminal justice and legal historyat the University of Reading, co-director of the Forum for Legal and Historical Research and author of A Polite Exchange of Bullets: The Duel and the English Gentleman, 1750-1850 (The Boydell Press, 2010).

Read more less

A novel approach to biography, drawing on interview material and other sources, all extensively annotated. This book is a major source of information about one of the most influential British composers of the mid-twentieth century and the musicians he knew. It also provides details of the musical relationship between Paris and London before, during and after World War II. Berkeley had a ring-side seat when he lived in Paris, studied with Nadia Boulanger and wrote reviews about musical life there from 1929 to 1934. His little known letters to her reveal the mesmeric power of this extraordinary woman. Berkeley was an elegant writer, and it is fascinating to read his first-hand memories of composers such as Ravel, Poulenc, Stravinsky and Britten. The book also contains interviewswith Berkeley's colleagues, friends and family. These include performers such as Julian Bream and Norman Del Mar; composers Nicholas Maw and Malcolm Williamson; the composer's eldest son Michael, the composer and broadcaster; andLady Berkeley. Lennox Berkeley knew Britten well, and there are many references to him in this eminently readable collection. Peter Dickinson, British composer and pianist, has written and edited numerous books about twentieth-century music, including Cage Talk: Dialogues with and about John Cage as well as Samuel Barber Remembered (both with University of Rochester Press) and three books published by Boydell Press: The Music of Lennox Berkeley; Copland Connotations; and Lord Berners: Composer, Writer, Painter. Peter Dickinson's music is widely performed and recorded. Dickinson knew Berkeley from 1956 until the composer's death in 1989; performed many of the songs with his sister, the mezzo Meriel Dickinson; and has written and broadcast regularly about his music.

Read more less

A rich picture of the complexities of early industrial development in the north-east of England. Historians increasingly emphasise that, in order to understand the industrial revolution fully as an economic, social and political process, the subject is best viewed from a regional, rather than a national, perspective. This book applies such an approach to the north-east of England in the early modern period, when, it is argued, the region experienced an early industrial revolution. Putting forward several new research findings and much new thinking, and covering many aspects of the economy of north-east England in the period, the book shows how rich and varied it was, and how vital the interplay of social, political and cultural forces was for industrial development. The book demonstrates that the economy of north-east England was not dominated by coal alone, and that previous historians' focus on 'the working class' misrepresents the full complexities of society in the period. Overall, the book has much to offer economic and social historians and historians of regional development generally, not just those interested in north-east England. ADRIAN GREEN is Lecturer in History at Durham University. He is co-editor ofRegional Identities in North-East England, 1300-2000 (The Boydell Press, 2007). BARBARA CROSBIE is Assistant Professor in History at Durham University, and is completing a study of The Rising Generations: AgeRelations and Cultural Change in Eighteenth-Century England. Contributors: A. T. BROWN, JOHN BROWN, ANDY BURN, BARBARA CROSBIE, ADRIAN GREEN , MATTHEW D. GREENHALL, LINDSAY HOUPT-VARNER, GWENDA MORGAN, PETER RUSHTON, LEONA SKELTON, PETER D. WRIGHT, KEITH WRIGHTSON

Read more less

Contributes to a better understanding not only of ecclesiastical power and politics but of life in an élite household in seventeenth-century Britain The Lambeth and Croydon Palace accounts for William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, represent the only extant record of the archiepiscopal household during his tenure in office. Spanning the period from December 1635 to January 1642, they offer a unique prism through which to view the highs and the lows of Laud's controversial career. They provide a wealth of new insights into his formal role, his private life and his personal habits, while at the same time casting new light on his associations with men and women from across the social hierarchy, including courtiers, privy councillors, merchants, MPs and, of course, the king. Yet the document itself, lost between 1642 and 1912 andnow housed in the National Archives, Kew, has almost entirely escaped the attention of modern scholars. This important manuscript is edited and analysed here in full for the first time. A lengthy introduction provides an overview of the ways in which the document brings to life both the household and its head, demonstrating how the household responded to its immediate social environment and the wider political context; interrogating the gifts and their givers to identify networks of people in social, political and religious terms; and, more generally, teasing out the relationship between material objects and political power. This is followed by a complete text of the manuscript, with contextual footnotes. Thus, the volume contributes to a deeper understanding not only of ecclesiastical power and politics, but of life in an élite household in seventeenth-century Britain. LEONIE JAMESis Lecturer in History at the University of Kent, Canterbury and author of 'This Great Firebrand': William Laud and Scotland, 1617-1645 (Boydell Press, 2017).

Read more less

Leos Janácek (1854-1928) occupied a pre-eminent position in Moravian (and wider Czech) culture, not only as a composer but also as a folksong collector, journalist, educator and nationalist. One of the greatest and most original composers of the early twentieth century, Leos Janácek (1854-1928) occupied a pre-eminent position in Moravian culture, not only as a composer but also as a folksong collector, journalist, educator and nationalist. His friends and associates included artists, writers, ethnographers and politicians, as well as conductors, singers and instrumentalists. Janácek's many pupils included the conductor Bretislav Bakala and thecomposer Pavel Haas. He had important associations with publishers in Vienna and Prague and with the earliest years of Czech Radio. Janácek was strongly attached to particular places - Hukvaldy, Brno, Luhacovice - and had professional links with Prague, Berlin, London and beyond. The Janácek Compendium includes nearly 300 entries on every aspect of Janácek's life and works, with detailed notes on all his significant compositions - above all the operas - providing the latest information to emerge about some of his most famous pieces. An extensive bibliography supports the entries, which are cross-referenced to enable wider exploration of particular topics. NIGELSIMEONE is a widely respected writer and lecturer on music, with a lifelong interest in Czech music. His books include Janacek's Works (Oxford University Press, 1997, co-authored with John Tyrrell and Alena Nemcová), TheLeonard Bernstein Letters (Yale University Press, 2013), and Charles Mackerras (Boydell Press, 2015, co-edited with John Tyrrell). He is a regular broadcaster on BBC radio.

Read more less

Provides a full, detailed picture of the life of an aristocratic family in early modern England. The Temples of Stowe were a leading Midland landed family, owning land in, and with strong connections to, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. In the seventeenth century they were one of the wealthiest and most prominent local families, building in the eighteenth century a large and beautiful country house, now Stowe School. The family also left voluminous records, housed mainly in the Huntington and the Folger Shakespeare libraries. Based on very extensive research in these records, this book provides a detailed picture of the family life of the early Temples. It examines household, financial and estate management, discusses social networking and the promotion of family interests, and considers the legal disputes the family were engaged in. It focuses in particular on the happy and effective marriage of Sir Thomas and Lady Hester Temple, exploring their relationship with each other, with their children, and with their siblings. Lady Hester, who outlived her husband by twenty years, is a good example of a formidable matriarch, who took a strong lead in managing the family and its resources. Overall, the book provides a full and detailed picture of the family life of an aristocratic family in early modern England. ROSEMARY O'DAY is Professor of History at the Open University and author of, amongst numerous other works, Women's Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies: Patriarchy, Partnership and Patronage (Pearson. Longman 2007) and Cassandra Brydges (1670-1735) First Duchess of Chandos: Life and Letters (Boydell Press 2007).

Read more less

Reveals, from a non-Eurocentric perspective, how Indian states developed and implemented maritime strategies which posed a serious threat to British naval power in the region. Most books on the colonisation of India view the subject in Eurocentric imperial terms, focusing on the ways in which European powers competed with each other on land and at sea and defeated Indian states on land, and viewing Indian states as having little interest in naval matters. This book, in contrast, reveals that there was substantial naval activity on the part of some Indian states and that this activity represented a serious threat to Britain's naval power. Considering the subject from an Indian point of view, the book discusses the naval activities of the Mahratta Confederacy and later those of Mysore under its energetic rulers Haidar Ali and his successor Tipu Sultan. Itshows how these states chose deliberately to develop a naval strategy, seeing this as the most effective way of expelling the British from India; how their strategies learned from European maritime technology, successfully blending this with Indian technology; how their opposition to British naval power was at its most effective when they allied themselves with the other European naval powers in the region - France, Portugal and the Netherlands, whose maritime activities in the region are fully outlined and assessed; and how ultimately the Indian states' naval strategies failed. Philip MacDougall, a former lecturer in economic history at the University of Kent, is a founder member of the Navy Dockyards Society, editor of the Society's Transactions, and the author or editor of seven books in maritime history, including The Naval Mutinies of 1797 (The Boydell Press, 2011).

Read more less

This book reconsiders the significance of the salon as a social and cultural phenomenon and as a source of artistic innovation and exchange in the long nineteenth century. This collection explores the idea of music in the salon during the long nineteenth century, both as a socio-cultural phenomenon, and as a source of artistic innovation and exchange. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly approaches,this book uses the idea of the salon as a springboard to examine issues such as gender, religion, biography and performance; to explore the ways in which the salon was represented in different media; and to showcase the heterogeneity of the salon through a selection of case studies. It offers fresh considerations of familiar salons in large cultural centres, as well as insights into lesser-known salons in both Europe and the United States. Bringing together an international group of scholars, the collection underscores the enduring impact of the European musical salon. ANJA BUNZEL holds a research position at the Czech Academy of Sciences. She gained her PhD in Musicology from Maynooth University and has published on Johanna Kinkel and nineteenth-century salon culture in both English and German. NATASHA LOGES is Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music, London. Her publications include Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall (Cambridge, 2014) and Brahms and his Poets (Boydell Press, 2017). She is a pianist, broadcaster and critic. Contributors: Maren Bagge, PéterBozó, Anja Bunzel, Katie A. Callam, Beatrix Darmstädter, Mary Anne Garnett, Harald Krebs, Clemens Kreutzfeldt, Veronika Kusz, Natasha Loges, Jennifer Ronyak, Kirsten Santos Rutschman, R. Larry Todd, Katharina Uhde, Michael Uhde, Harry White, Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Susan Youens

Read more less

Christopher Fifield's remarkable study explores the personality, life and work of a conductor who influenced and inspired the leading composers, singers and instrumentalists of his day. The Austro-Hungarian Hans Richter (1843-1916) was the first career-conductor to gain international fame. His first appointment was to Budapest, and he went on to dominate music-making in Vienna, Bayreuth, London, Manchester (withthe Hallé Orchestra) and other towns and cities in Britain and Europe between 1865 and 1912. Richter gave first performances of works by Wagner, Brahms, Elgar, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Stanford and Parry and helped to further the careers of Dvorák, Sibelius, Bartók and Glazunov. Christopher Fifield's remarkable study explores the personality, life and work of a conductor who influenced and inspired the leading composers, singers and instrumentalists of his day. Originally published in 1993, this revised and expanded edition contains extensive new material in the form of Richter's conducting books. Translated and reproduced in full, they detail every one of the 4,351 public performances Richter gave in a professional life spanning 47 years. Drawing on Richter's own diaries, the book also presents his correspondence with many contemporary composers (Wagner in particular) and performers. Fifield's biography of this seminal figure provides a revealing insight into British and European music and concert life during the long nineteenth century. CHRISTOPHER FIFIELD is a conductor, music historian, lecturer and broadcaster.He is the editor and author of the Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier and Max Bruch: His Life and Works, both published in new editions by The Boydell Press. He has also written Ibbs & Tillett - The rise andfall of a Musical Empire and The German Symphony between Beethoven and Brahms.

Read more less

An in-depth study of the life of Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1941), pianist, composer and conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, who arguably made Manchester the most important focus for music in Britain in his day. Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1941) is best known as the conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, who arguably made Manchester the most important focus for music in Britain in his day. This book chronicles and analyses Harty's illustrious career, from his establishment as London's premiere accompanist in 1901 to his years as a conductor between 1910 and 1933, first with the LSO and then with the Hallé, to his American tours of the 1930s. Tragically, Harty died from cancer in 1941 at the age of only 61. This book also looks at Harty's life as a composer of orchestral and chamber works and songs, notably before the First World War. Although Harty's music cleaved strongly to a late nineteenth-century musical language, he was profoundly influenced during his days in Ulster and Dublin by the Irish literary revival. A great exponent of Mozart and especially Berlioz, Harty was also a keen exponent of British music and an active supporter of American composers such as Gershwin. Harty's role in the exposition of standard and new repertoire and his relationship with contemporary composers and performers are also examined, against the perspective of other important major British conductors such as Sir Thomas Beecham, Malcolm Sargent and Sir Henry Wood. Additionally, the book analyses the debates Harty provoked on the subjects of women orchestral players, jazz, modernism, and the music of Berlioz. JEREMY DIBBLE is Professor of Music at Durham University and author of John Stainer: A Life in Music(The Boydell Press, 2007) and monographs on C. Hubert H. Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and Michele Esposito.

Read more less

A major study sure to fascinate musicians, Brahms enthusiasts and those interested in the history of recorded music. How did Brahms conduct his four symphonies? What did he want from other conductors when they performed these works, and to which among them did he give his approval? And crucially, are there any stylistic pointers to these performances in early recordings of the symphonies made in the first half of the twentieth century? For the first time, Christopher Dyment provides a comprehensive and in-depth answer to these important issues. Drawing together thestrands of existing research with extensive new material from a wide range of sources - the views of musicians, contemporary journals, memoirs, biographies and other critical literature - Dyment presents a vivid picture of historic performance practice in Brahms's era and the half-century that followed. Here is a remarkable panorama showcasing Brahms himself conducting, together with those conductors whom he heard, among them Levi, Richter, Nikisch, Weingartner and Fritz Steinbach, and their disciples, such as Toscanini, Stokowski, Boult and Fritz Busch. Here, too, are other famed Brahms conductors of the early twentieth century, including Furtwängler and Abendroth, whose connections with the Brahms tradition are closely examined. Dyment then analyses recordings of the symphonies by these conductors and highlights aspects which the composer might well have commended. Finally, Dyment suggests the importanceof his conclusions for those contemporary conductors who are currently attempting to rediscover genuine performance traditions in their own re-creations of the symphonies. This major study is complemented with forty photographs and a frontispiece. It is sure to fascinate musicians, Brahms enthusiasts and those interested in the history of recorded music. CHRISTOPHER DYMENT is author of Felix Weingartner: Recollections and Recordings(Triad Press 1976) and Toscanini in Britain (The Boydell Press 2012). He has published many articles about historic conductors over the last forty years.

Read more less

As entertaining as it is informative, this book explores the history of incarceration in the British Isles from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. Shades of the Prison House explores the history of imprisonment in the British Isles from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. Over the centuries, prisons - from castle dungeons to "lockups" to "penitentiaries" to gaols -have changed radically in name, conditions, attributes and functions, as well as in their character and rationale. Prisons have served many aims: detention, deterrence, punishment, reformation and rehabilitation, all in varying degrees. Yet while prisons and their purposes have been transformed, the same debates on imprisonment have continually recurred. Concerns about overcrowding and over-pampering, security and safety have been expressed from the very beginning, and modern notions that prison might serve a purpose other than containment or punishment were espoused long before the eighteenth century. Drawing on letters, treatises, personal accounts, histories, legal and official reports and studies of prison architecture and design, this book tells the story of prisons, prison life and those who experienced it, be they prisoners, governors, chaplains, warders, reformers or advocates. As entertainingas it is informative, the book examines the nature and quality of imprisonment over the last fifteen hundred years, before surveying present problems and concluding with thoughts on future directions. HARRY POTTER is a former fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge and a practising barrister specialising in criminal defence. Author of Law, Liberty and the Constitution: A Brief History of the Common Law (Boydell Press, 2015), he wrote and presented an award-winning series on the same subject for the BBC. He has also authored Edinburgh under Siege: 1571-1573 (2003), Blood Feud: The Stewarts and Gordons at War in the Age of Mary Queen of Scots (2002), Hanging and Heresy (1994) and Hanging in Judgment: Religion and the Death Penalty in England from the Bloody Code to Abolition (1993). Before being called to the Bar, he worked as a prison chaplain, largely with long-termand life-sentence prisoners.

Read more less

This Companion provides a comprehensive analysis and appraisal of all of Scott's available (published and unpublished) music and a broad picture of his entire output in literary, dramatic and philosophical genres. Cyril Scott (1879-1970) was an English composer, writer and poet. He was a prolific composer-pianist writing over 400 works including four symphonies, three operas and concerti for piano, violin, cello, oboe and harpsichord. Oftenperforming his own compositions he became a pioneer of British piano music, and his music was admired by composers as diverse as Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky and Percy Grainger, the last a lifelong friend. A true polymath, Scottwas also the author of forty-one books, including two autobiographies and one unpublished memoir, on subjects ranging from music, alternative medicine and humour to occultism, theosophy and Christianity. In addition, he wrote poems and plays and painted watercolours. This Companion explores the life and work of this remarkably creative man. It provides a comprehensive analysis and appraisal of all the available music and includes a complete catalogue of his musical works, along with a discography. Several works completely unknown to the musical world, both music and literary (such as the memoir 'Near the End of Life'), are here newly catalogued and discussed. Altogether, thevolume gives a broad picture of Scott's entire output in literary, dramatic and philosophical genres. LEWIS FOREMAN has published many books and articles on music. His Boydell titles include Bax: A Composer and hisTimes (2007), The John Ireland Companion (2011) and with Susan Foreman Felix Aprahamian (2015). DESMOND SCOTT is the son of Cyril Scott. He was an actor, theatre director and TV writer. He is also a sculptor and past-President of the Sculptors Society of Canada. He has contributed to The New Percy Grainger Companion (Boydell Press, 2010) and has published articles in musical journals on Cyril Scott. LESLIE DE'ATH isProfessor, Faculty of Music, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Singing, a pianist, conductor and opera director. He has recorded Scott's complete solo piano music for Dutton. Contributors: PETER ATKINSON, MARTYN BRABBINS, LESLIE DE'ATH, PETER DICKINSON, LEWIS FOREMAN, KATHERINE HUDSON, VALERIE LANGFIELD , KURT LELAND, STEPHEN LLOYD, STEVEN MARTIN, ROHINTEN DADDY MAZDA, RICHARD PRICE, EDMUND RUBBRA, DESMOND SCOTT, MARTIN YATES

Read more less