The Framing of Choirs and Their Conductors

Author(s):  
Colin Durrant

The British choral tradition is rooted in its ancient cathedrals and chapels, where the office of Evensong is sung, often daily. In addition, choral societies are to be found in most localities where singers come together and perform some of the major works in the western canon. Although singing itself occurs in a variety of forms this chapter looks at conductor-led choral singing. It does not give a fulsome picture of UK choral conducting and singing. Nonetheless, through a brief history starting from the John Curwen’s tonic sol-fa ideas for singing and culminating in a 20th century choral music renaissance; through an analysis of the English choral tradition; through a consideration of revivals of UK singing such as “Sing Up”; and through questionnaires and interviews with conductors and singers, the chapter explores some of the personal, cultural and sociological, educational, and musical issues and interests that can be found in the United Kingdom now.

1979 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 628-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Crawford

In a series of articles in this Journal, Professor Robert Wilson drew attention to the incorporation of references to international law in United States statutes, a technique designed to allow recourse to international law by the courts in interpreting and implementing those statutes, and, consequently, to help ensure conformity between international and U.S. law. The purpose of this article is to survey the references, direct and indirect, to international law in the 20th-century statutes of two Commonwealth countries in order to see to what extent similar techniques have been adopted. The choice of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Australia as the subjects of this survey is no doubt somewhat arbitrary (although passing reference will be made to the legislation of Canada and New Zealand). But the United Kingdom, a semi-unitary state whose involvement in international relations has been substantial throughout the century, and the Commonwealth of Australia, a federal polity with substantial legislative power over foreign affairs and defense -whose international role has changed markedly since 1901, do provide useful examples of states with constitutional and legislative continuity since 1901, and (as will be seen) considerable legislative involvement in this field.


1996 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 581-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill Valentine

What it means to be a child varies over space and time. Historically, the dominant Western construction of childhood has oscillated between representing children as the bearers of original sin—devils—or as innocent—angels, in the United Kingdom in the 19th and for much of the 20th century it was this latter imagining of childhood that took hold. But the murder of toddler Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-old boys in 1993 has been pivotal in reengaging a demonised conceptualisation of what it means to be a child. The author begins by considering some of the contested meanings of childhood and then goes on to explore the contemporary ‘othering’ of children and some of the spatial restrictions being imposed on young people by adults in an attempt to (re)draw boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Murray

Health psychology formally came of age in the United Kingdom in the 1980s, but it was prefigured by much discussion about challenges to the dominance of biomedicine in healthcare and debates. This articles focuses on what could be termed the pre-history of health psychology in the UK. This was the period in the earlier 20th century when psychological approaches were dominated by psychoanalysis which was followed by behaviourism and then cognitivism. Review of this pre-history provides the backdrop for the rise of health psychology in the UK and also reveals the tensions between the different theoretical perspectives.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (S1) ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
Matthias Goldmann

400 years after Shakespeare's death, a tragedy of Shakespearian dimensions has unfolded in the United Kingdom: Brexit. One Friday morning in June 2016, staring in disbelief at the incoming news, we were asking ourselves: “Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream.” A look at Shakespeare's work in the context of Brexit is no lofty, purpose-free exercise. For one, Shakespeare's work is instructive for explaining British national pride, its indulgence in splendid isolation that obviously provided one of the intellectual undercurrents of the Leave campaign (though the causes for voting Leave are, of course, a lot more multifaceted). The English nation formed itself in the Elizabethan age against the background of a century of quarrels with France in what was then the recent past. The pride that the British took from their victories is nowhere better reflected than in Henry V's Crispin's day speech. A small number of English soldiers heroically resisted the French forces. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Shakespeare infused the play with a feeling of togetherness based on England's victorious fight against continental powers. It was this idea of nationhood that carried England and the whole of the United Kingdom successfully through the turmoil of the 20th century. Small wonder that some demanded compelling (economic) reasons to continue bonding with the continent.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Rathgeb Smith

AbstractAs the articles in this special issue demonstrate, the emergence of government-voluntary sector compacts around the world is intimately linked to comprehensive transformations the welfare state is undergoing in many countries. The fact that the first compact was developed in England is significant; since the early 20th century, the development of the welfare state in many societies has been significantly influenced by the ideas coming from policymakers, scholars and advocates in the United Kingdom.


2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Howard ◽  
John Szymanski ◽  
Graham F. Welch

In the United Kingdom, it is increasingly common to find girls in English cathedral choirs, and some appear to wonder whether they can perform this traditionally male role appropriately. We report results from a perceptual experiment designed to establish whether or not listeners can correctly identify trained girl and boy English cathedral choristers when they are singing the top lines in samples of professionally recorded sacred choral music from one cathedral choir. In the experiment, the lower three parts (alto, tenor, and bass), the musical director, and the acoustic environment remained constant. Results suggest that listeners can identify the sex of the choristers singing the top line with an average accuracy of approximately 60%%, but the results also suggest that musical context plays an important part in this perceptual ability. In addition, boys are accurately identified more often than girls, and adult listeners can discriminate between the two more reliably than child listeners.


2020 ◽  
pp. 147377952096795
Author(s):  
John J Magyar

It is commonly believed that the rule prohibiting reliance on legislative history as an aid to statutory interpretation was firmly in place in the United Kingdom, and indeed throughout the English-speaking common law jurisdictions of the world, long before the turn of the 20th century; and that the rule was set aside in the case of Pepper v Hart in 1992. However, an examination of the relevant cases and the canonical textbooks by Maxwell and Craies reveal that the rule was subject to a significant amount of disagreement at the turn of the 20th century, particularly with respect to the admissibility of commissioners’ reports to uncover the mischief of a statutory provision. This disagreement would not be completely resolved until the 1960s. With respect to other types of legislative history, there were prominent exceptional cases over the course of the 20th century; and there was a gradual acceptance of more types of legislative history as aids to statutory interpretation during the decades leading up to Pepper v Hart. Thus, the simple narrative description that the rule was firmly in place until it was set aside in 1992 must give way to a more complex narrative of disagreement and gradual decline. Meanwhile, as the rule lost traction in the United Kingdom over the course of the 20th century, a growing accumulation of justifications for the rule has been assembled, and an ongoing debate has been taking place about the efficacy of reliance on legislative history. Based upon the different trajectories followed in other English-speaking common law jurisdictions, and particularly the United States, the decline of the rule was not inevitable. It follows that the current state of affairs is likely to change over time.


2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-142
Author(s):  
George S. Ford ◽  
Mark Thornton ◽  
Marc Ulrich

Abstract The growth of government has long been a core issue of public economics with a vast array of hypotheses offered and empirical investigations conducted. One key element of this quest, with respect to democratic governments, has been the size of the legislature which is seen increasing, decreasing, or neutral with respect to the growth of government. We argue that the inconclusive empirical results are the result of a misspecification and that instead of legislature size, it is constituency size that matters and that the larger the constituency size, the more government grows because of poorer representation. We test this hypothesis using the case of the United Kingdom over the 20th century and find that constituency size is positively related to the growth of government.


Collections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Consuelo Sendino ◽  
Erik Ducker ◽  
Cynthia Burek

Ida Lilian Slater (1881-1969) was one of the first women to work as a geologist in a male world, and although her career was short, she made important contributions to the Early Palaeozoic of Wales and Scotland. Her main work was based on a collection of a group of fossil scypho-zoan polyps gathered not by her but by another significant woman, Elizabeth Anderson, widely known as Mrs. Robert Gray (1831-1924). The majority of this collection is kept at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London, and the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge. She worked in the former one for two years describing species and comparing specimens for her monograph on British conulariids. Although her work was based not only on this group, she will be remembered by her important contribution to the conulariids through collections. The NHM collection is considered the best in the world in terms of diversity and the second best in its number of specimens, while the Sedgwick Museum has a smaller collection that is still considered the second best in diversity and number of specimens in the United Kingdom. Her work has been cited for more than 100 years and continues to be cited to this day by researchers on this group of fossils.


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