Performance of memory and the making of Pallaki Seva Prabandhamu of Maharaja Sahaji Bhonsale II

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Sushruti Santhanam

The Pallaki Seva Prabandhamu is a geya nataka (musical play) in lyrical Telugu language composed in the early eighteenth century by Sahaji Bhonsale II (r. 1684‐1712), the Maratha king of the Tamil-speaking region of Thanjavur. Using its most current iteration, the production of a digital album in 2012, as the locus, the article explores the historical vicissitudes of music construction in Carnatic music. The continuous recasting of old repertoire like the Pallaki illuminates the intangible agencies and exigencies of this process of historical record-keeping in southern Indian music. This article showcases the many historical and epistemic locations through which the Pallaki has passed, in the process exposing some critical gaps and misses in historical writing on the southern Indian musical repertoire. It also proposes an alternative, more direct engagement with musical material, in order to write about historical contexts of music and pushes the historian of music to yield more agency to the musician in co-writing the histories of music. The article raises two methodological possibilities: a critical inclusion of ‘performed repertoires’ as an archive of music history; and the inclusion of publishing, notating and other conventional archival of manuscripts within a larger conceptual framework of performance of text.

Author(s):  
Quintin Colville ◽  
James Davey

This introduction gives on overview of the sub-discipline of naval history since its emergence in the early eighteenth-century. It outlines the various social, cultural and political influences that have shaped the subject over the past three centuries, and discusses its relationship with the wider historical profession. The second half of the introduction sums up the current state of naval history, describing the many historiographies that now have a bearing on how the subject is conducted. Each contribution to the volume is introduced in this context, offering a precis of the chapters that follow.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Pedro Faria

Philosophical history became the Enlightenment genre of historical writing par excellence supposedly by “defeating” established humanist erudite history and antiquarianism. This article argues that, contrary to established perceptions, philosophical history developed out of a concern expressed by early eighteenth-century erudite historians about the nature of historical evidence: both David Hume—leading philosophical historian—and the members of the French erudite Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres shared a broadly Lockean approach to historical evidence, choosing verisimilitude to common experience as the key criterion of certainty. Indeed, Hume likely drew directly from the académiciens. Historical certainty is achieved, both sides concluded, by providing a verisimilar chain of causes of historical events, rather than mere lists of historical facts. Philosophical historians like Hume departed from the reformulated eighteenth-century version of erudite history by making causes the main object of history rather than merely a foundation of trustworthy factual accounts.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 82-110
Author(s):  
Broke Sherrard

AbstractAmong the vast array of priceless treasures in the collection of Jerusalem’s Armenian Patriarchate is a votive portrait of a local Jerusalem saint, the priest Hanna, a native son of Jerusalem’s Armenian community. The existence of the portrait is all but unknown, despite the fact that its subject has inspired generations of Jerusalem monks to dedicate their lives to the service of the Sts. James. As vicar to Jerusalem’s Patriarch Grigor IV Shirvants‘i (Shght‘ayakir) Hanna was instrumental in reviving the fortunes of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, which, in the early eighteenth century, had suffered a near-total eclipse. Although Hanna died before the age of forty, the many activities of his short career included such major achievements as the renovation of the Armenian sections of the Holy Sepulchre Church and the transformation of the Patriarchate compound into a fully enclosed and self-sufficient enclave.


2021 ◽  
pp. 297-340
Author(s):  
Mark Knights

As other chapters have made clear, the corruption of politics was a concern of the pre-modern era, especially in relation to political officers. Yet alongside the corruption of politics there was also a very strong politics of corruption. ‘Anti-corruption’ was nearly always political, in the sense of having a political agenda, implicit or explicit, behind it. This chapter argues that these political dimensions need to be recognised more than they have been. The chapter examines the ‘work’ done by the discourse of corruption, underlining its emotive power and its capacity both to challenge political rules and to help define boundaries of legitimate behaviour. The politics of anti-corruption is highlighted in the imperial context through a case study of early eighteenth-century Barbados. The chapter then examines these political functions in relation to the many highly politicised impeachments for corruption, from 1621 to 1806.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-81
Author(s):  
Roberta Ervine

AbstractAmong the vast array of priceless treasures in the collection of Jerusalem’s Armenian Patriarchate is a votive portrait of a local Jerusalem saint, the priest Hanna, a native son of Jerusalem’s Armenian community. The existence of the portrait is all but unknown, despite the fact that its subject has inspired generations of Jerusalem monks to dedicate their lives to the service of the Sts. James. As vicar to Jerusalem’s Patriarch Grigor IV Shirvants‘i (Shght‘ayakir) Hanna was instrumental in reviving the fortunes of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, which, in the early eighteenth century, had suffered a near-total eclipse. Although Hanna died before the age of forty, the many activities of his short career included such major achievements as the renovation of the Armenian sections of the Holy Sepulchre Church and the transformation of the Patriarchate compound into a fully enclosed and self-sufficient enclave.


1997 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Aspden

Joseph Addison's Spectator is perhaps the best-known early eighteenth-century periodical, its title a byword for the period's acute critical sensibility, its pages of enthusiastic enquiry a fitting monument to what we like to call the ‘Age of Reason’. Of the many commentaries on opera included in its pages, Spectator no. 5 (6 March 1711), critiquing the inadequacy of attempts at scenic verisimilitude on London's operatic stage, is justly renowned. Addison's tale of the undesirable (and wholly unmusical) results of releasing quantities of sparrows inside a theatre derives much of its pungency from the consequences of what Addison feels to be an improper juxtaposition of 'shadows and realities': sparrows and castrati alike escape pastoral fantasy to invade more sordid reality, penetrating ‘a lady's bed-chamber’ or perching ‘upon a king's throne’.


Muzikologija ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Martin Loeser

Is it useful to write history on everyday musical life? And how can we do it? This article introduces a historiographical concept initiated by historians such as Carlo Ginzburg, Alf L?dtke and Richard van D?lmen already in the 1970s, in an attempt to renew the writing of history. Instead of the reconstruction and interpretation of grand narratives and deep structures in society, economy and culture, these historians offer close descriptions of ?average citizens? with their daily musical routines, motivations and preferences, and the result is oft en a cluster of fascinating and wide-ranging insights into different forms of contact with music. Following this general approach, I hope to offer a panorama of everyday musical culture in Hamburg in the early eighteenth century. The sources used for this study include different musical genres such as opera, cantata and instrumental ?table music?, as well as books, newspaper reports, subscription lists, diaries, behavioural guides and archival documents. This material permits insights into the uses made of musicians such as Johann Mattheson, Georg Philipp Telemann and Reinhard Keiser, as well as into the social lives of the Hamburg citizenship.


2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Hallett

Puerperal fever was a devastating disease. It affected women within the first three days after childbirth and progressed rapidly, causing acute symptoms of severe abdominal pain, fever and debility. Although it had been recognized from as early as the time of the Hippocratic corpus that women in childbed were prone to fevers, the distinct name, “puerperal fever” appears in the historical record only in the early eighteenth century.


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