15,615 research outputs found
A Century of Music Production in Durham City 1711-1811: A Documentary Study.
No full textIn the eighteenth century, Durham City was an important centre of political power, the nucleus of which was the cathedral whose own wealth and power was immense. The Bishop, as the King’s representative, governed County Durham, and Durham City, as the capital of the palatinate, was a vibrant socio-economic centre. Those with means spent much of their free time patronising the large number of concerts, balls, assemblies, or theatrical productions that were frequently held in the city. For a musician, these public events provided ample opportunities to make a living. There were also opportunities to teach the children of wealthy patrons and to publish compositions. In consequence a large number of musicians came to the city, either to live or to visit, with race and assize weeks (the busiest time of the year) as a major focus of their employment.
The centre of musical life in Durham was the cathedral which dominated the production of both sacred and secular music. In order to attract good quality singers to the north, the cathedral’s Chapter offered unusually high salaries to its lay-clerks. The clerks, as able singers, forged a high reputation as a musical force in the region at a time when the quality of sacred music and cathedral choirs was in serious decline. Some of the lay-clerks, most notably Edward Meredith and William Evance, would travel large distances to perform. Until 1763 the cathedral organist was James Hesletine who was succeeded by Thomas Ebdon. Both men were also involved in the local concert scene, although, under Hesletine, a significant dispute with the Newcastle musician Charles Avison took place which ultimately led to the establishment of a rival subscription series by Avison in partnership with John Garth.
Music permeated all levels of society at Durham. In addition to what was produced for concerts and at the cathedral, music was prevalent in many other arenas. Music formed part of worship in all of the city’s churches, although it was only at St. Mary le Bow that it reached an appreciable standard. As part of the broader matrix of performances of secular music, Durham possessed its own musical society, and, as part of its wider public role, music performed a key role in civic and other ceremonial
occasions as well as for local freemasonry, an organisation to which many of Durham’s musicians belonged. Other forms of music-making took place in the domestic environment, but it was also possible to find music performed in the city’s
taverns. Furthermore, the performance of folk music and the presence of the town waits and military bands meant that music was commonly heard on the city’s streets.
This thesis is based on a detailed study of several primary sources. The most important of these is the local newspapers, but ecclesiastical records, diaries, personal
letters, published books on music and local history, and the music itself (both printed and in manuscript), have also been closely examined. By means of this archival work
it has been possible to examine the whole spectrum of musical life across the city, a study which amply demonstrates that Durham was one of the most important
provincial musical centres outside London. In fact, notwithstanding its provincial location, Durham was by no means insular in its outlook, nor was it entirely backward-looking, as can be seen in the distinctly innovative and inventive work of Garth
The Durham mint: the control, organization, profits and out put of an ecclesiastical mint
No full textThe university libraries of Durham and Cambridge have been the indispensable foundation of my work. I have spent countless enjoyable and extremely fruitful hours in the Archives and Special Collections department of Durham University Library, and in the Dean and Chapter Library of Durham Cathedral. The archivists and librarians of those two great sources of material and inspiration for Durham historians have always been helpful, often beyond the call of duty. Mr Patrick Musset and Mr Alan Piper helped me with many tricky matters of palaeography, and Ms Linda Drury has been a source of wisdom concerning Weardale mining. Mr Roger Norris has always offered a friendly and tolerant welcome in the Dean and Chapter Library. My greatest debt of gratitude in the Durham fellowship of archivists and librarians is to Mr Martin Snape, who laboriously checked my calendar of documentary evidence, and brought to my attention the mint indenture of 1367. The Public Record Office and the Borthwick Institute, University of York, have also been safe havens of documentary research, and their staffs have been unfailing in their friendly help. Dr Constance Fraser generously provided many transcripts of PRO documents from the reigns of Edward I and Edward, produced for her own research, which have been invaluable. Miss Ethel Stokes deserves an extremely posthumous mention for her excellent transcripts of thirteenth- century PRO documents, made for H.B.E. Fox shortly before the First World War. Mrs Yvonne Harvey and Dr Barrie Cook have provided unpublished information about the dies in the PRO and the British Museum respectively. Miss M.M. Archibald, Mr Christopher Bailey, Mr Edward Besly, Ms Kristin Bornholdt, Dr Cook, Mr Robert Heslip, Mr N.M.McQ. Holmes, Mr D. Lockwood, Mr Nicholas Mayhew, and Mr D. Robinson have very generously provided unpublished hoard data. The corpus of hoards would be much poorer without the contributions of Mr Besly, Dr Cook, and Mr Holmes in particular. Mr Holmes and Mr Keith Sugden have patiently answered onerous enquiries about obscure hoard publications. Dr Sean Miller has provided important data from the Early Medieval Corpus of single finds. The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the British Museum, Sunderland Museums, and last but not least my employers the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, have provided coins for illustration. Four collectors have also allowed their coins to be illustrated: Mr Joe Bispham, Mr Denis Martin, Dr Ian Taylor, and Mr Robert Thomas. Professor T.V. Buttrey has read the thesis with great care, saving me from a multitude of errors, although he could not save me from the sin of attempting to estimate mint outputs. Dr Mark Blackburn, Dr Robin Eaglen, Mr Mayhew, Mr Jeffrey North, Dr Peter Spufford, and Lord Stewartby have read parts of the thesis and offered many valuable comments and suggestions. They and others have greatly encouraged me in a seemingly interminable project by their interest in its progress, and Mr David Palmer and Mr Christopher Wren also deserve a particularly honourable mention in that regard. The laurel must go to my supervisor, Mr John Casey, who has shown superhuman endurance in the six years since he first succumbed to the obviously mad idea that a Roman archaeologist could supervise a thesis on a medieval mint. John has been a good supervisor, and a good friend. My greatest regret in completing this thesis is that my mother, Vera, and father, George, did not live to see the end of a project that depended so much upon their love and encouragement
Tithe and agrarian output between the Tyne and Tees, 1350- 1450
No full textThe aim of this thesis is to establish a series of agrarian output indicators, based on tithe receipts, for the period 1350 to 1450 and to interpret this series in the light of current thinking on the medieval economy. Tithe receipts recorded in the accounts of Durham Priory were used for the series. After a broad discussion of the concept of tithe, covering Its origins, significance and historiography, the institution of tithe is examined at the parish and monastic levels. There follows a detailed discussion of the method used to convert the tithe receipts into indicators of agrarian output: this represents a development of methods used by French historians in the 1960s and 1970s. The final two chapters examine the significance of these indicators for our understanding of the economy of the late middle ages. Agrarian output in the parishes between the Tyne and Tees proves to have been comparable to developments on demesne land elsewhere in England. Some significant differences are also observed and discussed
The aesthetics of history in the modern English long poem: David Jones’s the anathemata. Basil bunting's briggflatts, Geoffrey Hill's Mercian hymns and Roy fisher's a furnace
No full textDavid Jones, Basil Bunting, Geoffrey Hill and Roy Fisher are major poets in the modernist tradition who have written long poems which incorporate and interrogate history. The Anathemata. Briggflatts. Mercian Hvmns and A Furnace all explore the poet's sense of identity and his relationship to the present by attempting to give order to the past. This thesis examines how this attempt, and the various ideologies, philosophies and aesthetics that have accompanied it, are given form in these poems. It relates detailed readings of the poems to their intellectual and historical contexts. The Introduction outlines the typical features of die modernist long poem and suggests that they are peculiarly suited to expressions of both history and nationalism. Chapter I is a critical assessment of the aesthetics of Wilhelm Worringer and Herbert Read. Chapter II shows how David Jones endeavours to give form to the various histories of The Anathemata by using these aesthetics in conjunction with the historical philosophy of Oswald Spengler, the analysis of myth and ritual of J.G. Frazer and Jessie Weston, and his own nationalism and Roman Catholicism. This chapter accounts for the poem's obscurity by investigating its conflicting ideas of form, and locating it in die context of the Second World War. Chapter III, on Briggflatts. argues that Basil Bunting combines the ideas of Worringer and Read with an autobiographical narrative and a structure derived from music, in order to give die poem a form mirroring both his melancholia and the harmony he perceived in nature. It contends that the histories in the poem are best read as relating to autobiography and not Northumbrian nationalism. Chapter IV shows how Geoffrey Hill refashions the English long poem in a manner close to that of the lyric sequence. It explores notions of empathy and historical continuity in Mercian Hymns. and analyses Hill's ambiguous evocation of his Anglo-Saxon roots in the context of contemporary political discourse. Chapter V discusses the ways in which Roy Fisher enacts different apprehensions of time and history in the dialectical structure of A Furnace, and relates them to the thought of John Cowper Powys. The Conclusion draws together the recurrent themes of the thesis: change and continuity, history and identity, time and timelessness
The choral foundation of Durham Cathedral, c.1350 - c.1650
No full textThe muniments of Durham cathedral, city, and diocese have been explored in order to present and assess the contribution made by lay musicians to worship in the cathedral. By 1335-60 the boys and men had become sufficiently established to merit specific payments. Whether or not the lay Cantor dates back that far is uncertain, but in 1390 it was agreed that what was required was a Cantor-Instructor. No proof for the implementation of this earlier than 1415 has come to light, nor has any contract earlier than that made by the monastery with John steel in 1430. From it and those of his successors, and from Rites of Durham, a picture emerges of the Cantor's duties and of the part played by boys and men in the daily Lady Mass in the Galilee chapel and in the Mass of the Name of Jesus on Fridays in the nave. Following the suppression of its monastic arm in 1539 Durham was re-constituted a cathedral only in 1541 . The pattern of worship established c.1560 continued until the 1620s, when the innovations introduced by John Cosin caused Peter Smart (a Calvinist) to preach a vituperative sermon on 27 July 1628. From the litigation which ensued much emerges about whole ordering of worship in Durham since the 1560s. Produced whilst the ceremonialists held sway were several sets of new music books for the choir. Some 40% of these are still in Durham. such is the detail in the muniments that it has proved possible to suggest when the books were transcribed and by whom. It has also proved possible to identify the contributions of no fewer than eight Durham scribes to the music books at Peterhouse, Cambridge. That their work should be so far afield is explained by the fact that when John Cosin became Master of Peterhouse i n 1635 he re-established the post of College organist and drew heavily upon the Durham repertoire. The succession of Cantors and Masters of the Choristers provided the framework on which to interweave details of their lives, historical events and musical developments. Biographical information relating to the other members of the choir has been assembled in Appendix 1. This is followed other Appendices many of which present together all occurrences of certain fields of information
An exercise in gracious living: the north east new towns 1947-1988
No full textThis thesis examines the history of the North East new towns and how local, regional and national policies and events have impacted upon their respective trajectories. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first is concerned with the social, economic and political developments of Aycliffe in South-West Durham, and Peterlee in East Durham, both of which were designated as new towns within a few months of each other in 1948. The second part of the thesis investigates the development of the new towns from 1963 to the dissolution of the towns' development corporation boards in1988. This is because the economic and industrial priorities of the towns changed following the publication of the Hailsham Report in November 1963. More importantly for the North East region, however, was that in 1963 a further new town was designated at Washington in North-West Durham, which altered the whole dynamic of the region's new town programm
Writing and the rights of reality: usurpation and potentiality in Derrida, Plato, Nietzsche, and Beckett
No full textThe thesis critically evaluates Jacques Derrida's conferral of the rights of reality on writing, focussing on his theory of an arche-text in light of the speculative nature of this theory. The theory is initially considered in the context of Derrida's elucidation of the usurpatory status of writing within the Platonic and Nietzschean texts. This consideration reveals an admission of writing's usurpatory status by both writers while at the same time demonstrating their awareness of the intrinsically speculative nature of this view, the significance of writing lying in its ability to exteriorise the radically indeterminate status of consciousness m relation to reality rather than its ability to displace consciousness or reality The analyses, therefore, not only bring the Derridean hypothesis of a repressive or phonocentric metaphysical episteme into question but also exhibit the historical and philosophical role of potentiality in relation to writing, writing's ultimate significance lying in its capacity to exteriorise our existence as a mode of potentiality. Accordingly, in the second half of the thesis the Derridean theory of writing is countered with a specifically Aristotelian theory of the text as it is exhibited in the prose of Samuel Beckett, an author whose significance lies in his close alignment with Derridean theory within contemporary criticism. It is demonstrated that this identification has obviated an awareness of the significance of potentiality within the Beckettian text, his work consequently being appraised in the previously neglected context of Aristotelian metaphysics
Functional Goods and Fancies: The Production and Consumption of Consumer Goods in Northumberland, Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham c. 1680-1780
No full textThis thesis explores the place of consumer goods in the culturally changing environment of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. It specifically focuses on the production and consumption of consumer goods in Northumberland, Newcastle and Durham between c. 1680 to 1780. It places the region in a national context and analyses how the diffusion of national taste encouraged the production and consumption of consumer goods in Newcastle, Northumberland and Durham.
Chapter One outlines the historical context, theoretical problems and research questions that frame this thesis. Chapter Two creates an overview of the regional economy. It maps the establishment of consumer industries and discusses their geographical location. Chapter Three analyses the supply side factors that allowed the development of multiple industries. It considers the use of the region’s natural raw materials, the importation of raw materials, the role of indigenous landowners and merchant-gentry in the consumer industries, and the movement of skilled craftsmen to the region. Chapter Four focuses on the products manufactured in the local industries. It details the cultural changes that encouraged the creation of new types of consumer goods and analyses the markets these products were destined for. Chapter Five analyses Newcastle’s connection to other region’s in Britain through the coasting trade. It details the expansion of vessels destined for the Tyne and variety of products entering Newcastle, especially those from London. Chapter Six focuses on retailing, the lynch-pin connecting production and consumption. It traces the chronological growth of retailing and the gradual transition of facilities in the region in response to the availability of consumer goods. Chapter Seven considers the adoption and ownership of new good by the region’s middling sorts. Chapter Eight analyses ownership and consumption in a more qualitative manner focusing on individuality, debtors and paupers, and consumption of local goods by indigenous gentry
Hick Scorner [John McKinnell (production director); David Williams (video director)]
No full textVideo of a live performance of the morality play 'Hick Scorner' (1514) by Durham Medieval Theatre Co, directed by John McKinnell (first modern European production) John McKinnell (production director) David Williams (video director
Auckland and Durham Castles in the Eighteenth Century
No full textThis chapter examines how the bishops' aspirations for contemporary secular amenities were incorporated in buildings that also had episcopal requirements. It suggests that the former were the principal focus of eighteenth-century modifications to Durham Castle and Auckland Castle, as the bishops employed the same architectural features and craftsmen as their lay peers. Eighteenth-century Bishops of Durham were drawn from gentry and aristocratic families, and as wealthy, educated, landowning men they shared with their secular peers an expectation to live in houses of suitable state to their social position. Auckland Castle became the favoured residence for the bishops when they were in the Palatinate during the eighteenth century. This was partly because the growth of industries and population in Durham City made Durham Castle a less attractive residence. Although some bishops preferred Auckland Castle as a residence, Durham Castle was 'the ceremonial centre of the bishops' power'
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