143,343 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 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
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 Durham gentry: social stablility and change in the palatinate of Durham, c.1286-1346
No full textThis thesis is a study of the gentry society of the palatinate of Durham in a sixty year period embracing the end of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth century. It sets the evidence concerning Durham against a number of key debates concerning the development and status of the gentry class within the north of England and the realm as a whole, and demonstrates that whilst the position of the gentry fits with general themes common to the realm, it had a different experience from the gentry of the far north because it stood aloof from the effects of the Scottish wars. The central theme is the notion of cohesion: did cohesion exist within Durham society and what form did it take? It is argued that this cohesion was not based upon a rigid separate administrative structure, but rather a whole range of social relationships manifested in the lordship of the bishop. The main areas to be considered are the role of the Durham gentry in administration and office-holding, and landholding and lordship. First, it is demonstrated that Durham administration was highly organised and comprised three distinct types of men, but that these men had varied careers and also identified their interests outside Durham. Second, it is demonstrated that there was great stability within landholding in the palatinate, and that theories of decline in the gentry class are not borne out by the evidence relating to Durham, although the role of the gentry was, itself, distinctive. Finally, the role of ecclesiastical relations, and the gentry within these, is considered, and it is proposed that a stratification took place between ecclesiastical and secular society in this period. Overall, this thesis argues that experience of the Durham gentry demonstrates that Durham society possessed a high degree of cohesion in this period, but that the historian should still be cautious when talking of 'identity' within that society
Higher level appell functions, modular transformations and non-unitary characters
No full textIn this thesis, we firstly extend elements and periodicity properties of the theta function theory to functions that represent a wider domain of symmetries and properties, graded with different amounts of p ≥ 1, p ϵ N. Unlike theta functions, these generalised, "higher-level Appell functions" K(_p) satisfy open quasiperiodicity relations, with additive theta function terms emerging as violating terms of open quasiperiodic K(_p)’s. We evaluate the S and T modular transformations of these functions and show that the S-transform of K(_p) does not just give back K(_p), but also includes p additional 0-functions which are precisely those violating the quasiperiodicity of Appell functions. This sets a new pattern of modular group representations on functions that are not double quasiperiodic. While calculating the S-transform of K(_p), a newly arising function, namely ɸ(T, μ) will be also thoroughly analysed. As two interesting applications, we firstly study the modular group action on unitary and on an admissible class of non-unitary N = 2 characters which are not periodic under the spectral flow and cannot therefore be rationally expressed through theta functions. Secondly we continue this study for the admissible representation of the affine Lie superalgebra sl (2|l). We see in the final result for both cases that the functions A(T, V) are the "violating" terms of unitary calculations. We lastly confirm all our results by some sets of consistency checks including an essential residue calculation. We believe this new way of using Appell functions, could be used for any other algebraic structure whose characters can be rewritten in terms of higher-level Appell functions
Simulation studies of the imaging atmospheric cherenkov technique using the Durham mark 6 and H.E.S.S. stand-alone telescopes
No full textThe subject of this thesis is the simulation study of the development of extensive air show ers produced by very high energy gamma-ray and hadronic cosmic rays with respect to the Cherenkov light they produce, and its imaging in ground based telescopes. Chapters 1-4 are introductory: Chapter 1 covers the mechanisms responsible for the production of very high energy gamma-rays, whereas, chapter 2 focusses on the development of extensive air showers and Cherenkov light production. Chapter 3 covers the instrumentation used to measure the Cherenkov light using the imaging atmospheric Cherenkov technique. Chapter 4 covers known and possible sources of very high energy gamma-rays. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 cover research performed by the author: Chapter 5 discusses some of the differences between three popular extensive air shower simulations codes, namely ALTAI, CORSIKA and MOCCA. Chapter 6 details the simulation of the response of two ground based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope (the Durham Mark 6 and stand-alone H.E.S.S. telescopes), and in particular details the derivation of the flux of the x-ray selected BL-LAC PKS 2155-304 with the Durham Mark 6 telescope. This represents the refinement of a published measurement given an improved telescope simulation. The significance of the signal seen is 6.8o, and the integral flux derived above 1.5 TeV (assuming a differential spectral slope of-2.6) is {2.5±0.7stat ± (^0.5)(_1.6syst) x 10(^-7) photons m(^-2) s(^-1) Chapter 7 discusses the importance of the atmosphere, and the results of shower simulations under different atmospheric assumptions are presented, which indicate the importance of atmospheric calibration for the new generation of Cherenkov telescopes. The results of this chapter suggest that to first order large changes in the low level aerosol concentration have a much more significant effect on the trigger rate of a stand-alone H.E.S.S. telescope, than on the Hillas parameter distributions seen. Chapter 8 brings together the work done in this thesis, and highlights a final set of fluxes for the active galactic nuclei sources seen with the Durham Mark 6 telescope, many of which will form future sources to be measured with the H.E.S.S. system. The current status of the stand-alone H.E.S.S. system is also covered in chapter 8. The thesis concludes with a further brief discussion of the future prospects for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov astronomy
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
The origins and development of Durham Castle to AD 1217 : the archaeological and architectural record.
No full textSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DX182162 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
The popular reformation in county Durham
No full textMuch recent historical writing has doubted whether the Reformation can be described as a genuinely popular movement, pointing out that in many regions the 'official’ reforms of 1529-1559 were simply imposed by the authorities from above, while Protestantism often made only slow and difficult progress at a popular level. The following study, therefore, aims at placing the unique and fascinating County Palatine of Durham within this debate about the causes, development and pace of religious change in the sixteenth century. It 'also aims, secondly, to examine the profound changes in the religious environment and popular mentalities brought about by the Reformation in Durham - with its defacement of protective symbols and abrogation of liturgical ceremonies - as the reformers attempted to displace the sacraments and ritualised visual effects of the old order with a Protestant emphasis on preaching and the word. In order to 6btain some purchase on the event, the opening chapter briefly examines the nature of the church and religious life in the diocese on the eve of the .Reformation, especially the bishopric's devotion to the cult of St. Cuthbert. The study proceeds by examining the region's response to the religious changes of the 1530s, and the county's unique and powerful contribution to the Pilgrimage of Grace with its peculiar blend of northern separatism, popular unrest, noble 'honour' and regional Catholicism. Subsequent chapters ~how in turn how Cuthbert Tunstal, Bishop of Durham (1530-1559) was able to maintain both conservative religious practices and the Catholic clergy during the latter part of Henry VIII's reign and that of Edward VI, by his political skill and careful use of patronage~ The penultimate chapter then explores the way in which Protestantism was imposed in the 1560s from London as a predominantly academic movement, through the efforts of a Calvinistically inspired cathedral chapter and reforming preachers like Bernard Gilpin. Finally, the study concludes by showing how the failure of the Northern Rising in 1569 enabled the crown to sweep away many of the forces that had preserved popular Catholicism during the previous decade - the Marian clergy, conservative local administration and bastard-feudal Catholicism of the Nevilles
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