In the Footsteps of Corelli

2020 ◽  
pp. 202-215
Author(s):  
Walter S. Reiter

Technical information on the basic bow stroke of the giga and dynamic variation within it are the subject of two exercises. The sarabanda is contrasted with that of Corelli (Lesson Seventeen) and the student encouraged to realize the figured bass of this and other movements. Rhythm contains emotional information just as harmony does: altering the rhythms of a melody line by Pergolesi and comparing their impact demonstrates this point. Vivaldi uses syncopations, hemiolas, and ambiguities of time signature, and he tussles with the bass to give his corrente rhythmic interest, so maximizing the rhythmic impact is the purpose of Exercise 87. Last, the student is encouraged to read the by now familiar sonata from the original 1709 edition as a preparation to reading seventeenth-century notation in upcoming lessons. As usual, the lesson is packed with detailed observations of the text and technical and musical information.

Author(s):  
Erin Webster

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-255
Author(s):  
David Cardona

Abstract Roman Malta has been the subject of numerous historical and archaeological studies since the seventeenth century. However, the lack of documented excavations and the restricted number of sites – particularly those within the boundaries of the two main Roman towns – meant that numerous grey areas persist in our understanding of the islands under Roman rule, regardless of how many studies have been done so far. This article attempts to provide an overview of past works, studies and a discussion of the known consensus on knowledge of sites, populations and economies. This in an attempt to provide a clear picture of what we know (and what we do not) about Roman Malta. Finally, I will comment on current and new research and projects which are being carried out by various local entities and foreign institutions to enhance our knowledge of this very important historic era for the Maltese islands. This culminates into a proposal for the use of a predictive model that may help us identify new sites and, consequently, provide new data on this phase.


1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-172
Author(s):  
J. D. Crichton

In recent years, students of recusancy have begun to turn their attention to the inner life of the Catholic community, a development much to be welcomed; and it is understandable that for the most part the centre of interest has been what is called the spiritual life. Influences coming from St. Francis of Sales and St. Teresa of Avila have been traced, and Augustine Baker has rightly been the subject of much study. What needs further investigation, I believe, is the devotional life of the ordinary person, namely the gentry and their wives and daughters in their country houses, especially in the seventeenth century. There were also those who towards the end of the century increasingly lived in London and other towns without the support of the ‘patriarchal’ life of the greater families. No doubt, many were unlettered, and even if they could read they were probably unused to handling anything but the simplest of books. It would be interesting to know what vernacular prayers they knew and said, how they managed to ‘hear Mass’, as the phrase went, what they made of the sacrament of penance, and what notions about God and Jesus Christ they entertained. Perhaps the religious practice of the unlettered is now beyond recall, but something remains of the practice of those who used the many Primers and Manuals that are still extant.


Author(s):  
Lubomír Hampl

The translation from Latin and Czech into Polish of an entire important, but still little-known work (Latin Dedicatio ad tria regna – Czech Dedikace třem královstvím – English Dedication to the three Kingdoms) introduces us to a large extent to the subject matter of the “i m p r o v e m e n t o f human affairs”. The translation of this manuscript fills a large gap in Polish comeniology. In the work translated into Polish, we can see how John Amos Comenius persistently and decisively pursued the honorable goal he had set for himself – that is, the pansophic improvement of all human affairs. The Polish-speaking reader will finally be able to “fully” read this work in their native language, in which there are also important elements related not only to pedagogical and educational topics, but above all to socio-philosophical issues and theological-biblical comparative references, centered around the domain of interdisciplinary research. The so-called “Portrait sketch” is also presented, or what hopes Comenius linked to the three described countries, strictly speaking the kingdoms of the North, i.e. Poland, Sweden and Great Britain, during the period of significant changes in seventeenth-century Europe.


Author(s):  
Antonio Sánchez Jiménez

This short article analyses an apparent hapax (“támbico pilar”) in an auto sacramental by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La cena del rey Baltasar (c. 1630-1635). After presenting the passage and the critics’ opinion on the subject, this essay contextualises the phrase and formulates a hypothesis to clarify the passage by using, among other arguments, other seventeenth-century printed texts.


1892 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 145-165
Author(s):  
Horace Rumbold

In the course of extensive researches in which I have been engaged for some years on the subject of the history of the Rumbold family during the seventeenth century, and more especially at the period immediately preceding the Restoration, I came across a paper in the British Museum which has never, as far as I know, been made public, and is, perhaps, not unworthy to find a place among the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. The curious document in question is headed A Particular of the Services performed by me Henry Rumbold for His Majesty.


1970 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlene A. Miller

Now that the tremendous influence of Jacob Boehme (1575–1624) upon natural philosophy and religious thought has come to be more fully appreciated, the question of Boehme's relation to Luther's theology has come once again to be the subject of a lively scholarly discussion. This study proposes to compare the position of Luther and Boehme on certain key theological concepts and propositions as they are denned in the Genesis commentaries of the two men. This limited and concrete study may shed light upon the larger question of the relation of their theologies as a whole and the nature of the dependence of Boehme on Luther as mediated by seventeenth-century orthodoxy.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Hight ◽  
Lee E. Hornberger ◽  
Elizabeth Lawrence ◽  
Matthew W. Gawlowski

Abstract Engineers need to absorb and learn large amounts of new technical information. Effective methods of receiving this information are needed. Hypermedia stacks are one emerging avenue for information transmittal. This paper discusses two programs that have been created to address two distinct requirements for information transmittal — description of new technology in an easily accessible form, and guiding novices in developing skills and gaining insights in solving a particular type of problem. The first program was developed using a HyperCard stack and a Macintosh computer and describes current techniques available for rapid prototyping. Professional engineers and engineering students are largely unaware of these technologies because information on the subject is new. The second program is being developed using ToolBook under Windows and deals with the problem of sizing an idler shaft under given loads and operating conditions. This is a standard type of problem that might be given in a junior level machine design course. It draws on knowledge from statics and strength of materials and so acts as a review of fundamentals as well as a test of deeper understanding. This second program is at an earlier stage of development.


Author(s):  
Clare Jackson

This chapter provides a picture of the uses to which judicial torture was put after 1660. It also reconsiders Hume's ‘vestige of barbarity’: the role of judicial torture in late seventeenth-century Scotland. It first explores the practice of judicial torture in its broader legal, political, and philosophical contexts before turning to consider three specific instances wherein torture was sanctioned. The first concerns the torture in 1676 of the Covenanting preacher, James Mitchell, following his alleged attempt to assassinate the head of the established church, Archbishop James Sharp of St Andrews. The second investigates the torture of William Spence and William Carstares in 1684 on suspicion of treasonable attempts to foment an Anglo-Scottish rebellion against Charles II's authority, and the final case addresses the torture in 1690 of an English political agitator, Henry Neville Payne, in connection with Anglo-Scottish Jacobite intrigues being concerted against the government of William and Mary. Moreover, it describes the role of judicial torture within a domestic Scottish context. It is noted that if judicial torture is regarded as ‘an engine of state, not of law’, primarily deployed to protect civil society, rather than to punish known crimes, then some chilling contemporary parallels emerge.


Author(s):  
Alexander Broadie

This chapter provides an overview of Scottish philosophy in the seventeenth century. Seventeenth-century Scotland produced a vibrant philosophical culture rich in achievement, with philosophers responsive to each other and responsive to philosophers of other countries. With regard to its philosophical culture, the century between the Age of Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment was an age in which there flourished the intellectual vigour that one might reasonably have expected given the philosophical achievements of the flanking centuries. Almost all the literature on Scottish philosophy attends exclusively to the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. This means that in providing a narrative that embraces philosophical writing antecedent to the Scottish Enlightenment, there is likely to be pressure to approach the subject in a teleological spirit, that is, by seeing the earlier century’s work in terms of the eighteenth century’s and attending to that earlier work on the basis of terms of reference dictated by what came later.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document