4,492 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
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
CCD polarimetry as a probe of regions of recent star-formation
No full textChapter 1 of this thesis details the incorporation of a Charged Coupled Device (CCD) detector system with the Durham Imaging Polarimeter. The details include the physical characteristics of the device and the electronics and software associated with the device control and data storage. The introduction of the CCD detector system haa made necessary the inclusion of a super-achromatic half-wave plate in the polarimeter which has an inherent variability in its optic axis. Chapter 2of this work describes fully how suitable corrections for this effect can be made, and derives "first order" results. The CCD performance is examined in comparison with the detector used previously and hence the veracity of the new results is established. Chapter 3 is a relevant summary of the status of the astronomy of the immediate regions of recent star-formation. Chapter 4 describes multicolour polarimetry of NGC2261/R Mon covering the period 1979 to 1986. The data conclusively proves that the polarisation of R Mon must be due to effects close to R Mon (~ 14 astronomical units). This is evident because of the dynamic timescale of the variations of the polarisation of R Mon and the anomalous band of polarisations seen across the head of the nebula. The interpretation presented is an extension of the Elsasser and Staude (1978) method of polarising objects embedded within the confines of a nearly edge-on disk. Detailed polarisations within the main nebula body provide evidence for this extended interpretation and also for an extensive helical magnetic field which may extend into the disk. Also it is seen that R Mon must still be "shrouded" in material preventing light from directly reflecting in the main nebula body. It is not thought that the variations in the region close to R Mon are due to planetary bodies but to accretion from the disk. The results of this re-interpretation of the polarising mechanism are tentatively applied to other similar objects
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
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
Home-education : rationales, practices and outcomes
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Recession and Recovery: the Economic History of Rural Society in Durham, c.1400-1640
No full textThis thesis explores how rural society adapted to the fifteenth-century recession, and how this affected the ability of their sixteenth-century counterparts to respond to inflation. It does so through three primary sections: the first explores how the Bishops of Durham and the monks of Durham Cathedral Priory responded differently to the fifteenth-century recession and analyses the subsequently divergent development of their estates. By the seventeenth century, all of the Dean and Chapter’s lands were consolidated holdings on 21-year leases, whereas a confused mixture of copyhold and leasehold land had developed on the bishops’ estate. The second section explores the balance of landed power in the Palatinate of Durham from the late-fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth century amongst the laity. This further explores whether the ‘crisis of the aristocracy’ and the ‘rise of the gentry’ are misnomers more adequately phrased in terms of land usage as the ‘rise of agricultural producers’ and the ‘crisis of rentier landlords’. The final section explores how the tenantry of the above estates survived this period, with the gradual stratification of landed society and the emergence of the yeomanry as a social group. It especially focuses upon how the divergent development of the two ecclesiastical estates impacted upon the opportunities and challenges facing the tenants of Durham. The overall conclusion reached by this thesis is that estate management and institutional constraints were often crucial factors in the transformation of the English countryside: these two neighbouring ecclesiastical estates faced broadly the same problems and yet the composition of their estates diverged significantly across this period. Institutional constraints had a profound effect not only on levels of rent, but also the tenure of holdings and ultimately their relative size; three of the most important factors in the formation of agrarian capitalism
Monks and markets : Durham Cathedral-Priory, 1460-1520.
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Motivating students attending a teacher education programme in Hong Kong using quality learning teams
No full textPurpose. In 1995, the Government of Hong Kong amalgamated six independent, Government sponsored Colleges of Education, which offered Certificate in Education courses, into the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The remit of the newly-formed, autonomous Institute was to attain university status and to upgrade courses to degree and post-degree level. Many of the existing staff remained with the newly-formed institute while a recruitment drive resulted in an increase in international lecturing staff. This study results from action research, undertaken by the author, to develop pedagogy suitable for both the international lecturing staff and the Chinese student teachers. The research set out to take advantage of the diverse backgrounds of the lecturing staff. Of the various pedagogic strategies employed by lecturing staff, the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach emerged as the most effective, promoting as it does a way for the students to plumb co-operatively the often difficult depths of what they are studying, as well as motivating them in their chosen career. The stringent examination system in Hong Kong, the lack of university places and the economic situation all play their part in determining the student population in the Institute of Education where students whose first choice is to enter the teaching profession could well be outnumbered by those who consider themselves without more attractive alternatives. In addition, the lecturing staff from overseas became aware of the Chinese culture of 'Shame’ among their students - the students who had failed were castigated and further marginalized by their family and friends. It was hoped that the employment of a TQM approach through the use of Quality Learning Teams would help to combat this 'shame' and, hopefully, increase the self-confidence of these 'shamed' students. The project's aim was to introduce and role-model a different pedagogic practice and to utilise constructivist-based pedagogy so that two major outcomes could be measured: (1) that student teachers would become active and confident learners who would themselves challenge their own pupils and (2) that colleagues outside the project could observe the usefulness of this alternative pedagogy and make use of the innovation in their own lecture rooms. This involved investigation of diverse aspects of teaching and learning. Research on individual areas has been quite extensive, but little research has been done in this particular area with regard to student teachers in Hong Kong and it is, therefore, the purpose of this study to add to existing knowledge, with specific emphasis on Quality Learning Teams. The rationale for the study was, on the one hand, the Hong Kong Special Administration (HKSAR) Government Educational Reforms, but also - and more importantly for the lecturers concerned - the search for a means to inculcate a culture of co-operative learning within the student-teacher body, as well as a means for international lecturing staff to create an effective pedagogy, utilizing both mother tongue and English as languages of instruction. Major Findings. The findings of the study indicated that student learning was enhanced by using Quality Learning Teams. This was demonstrated by the overall module results which showed higher module grades for the groups who were subjected to the innovative pedagogy than for those groups who were subjected to the normal 'traditional' pedagogy. Student self-esteem, self-confidence, trust in peers, and a work ethos of self-sufficiency developed amongst the majority of student teachers. Language skills were enhanced and strategies for learning were improved. It is hoped that the results of this study will assist in the future planning of courses in the education of student-teachers and in creating a more 'risk-taking' culture within the lecturing staff at the Institute
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