British and Irish Studies at IUPUI

The IUPUI British and Irish Studies Group  and the IUPUI Department of English will be hosting the first speaker of our 2011 speakers series on 19 April.  Please join us as Dr. Katherine Ellison, Assistant Professor of English at Illinois State University discusses “Cryptographia Cryptographica: Deciphering Early English Literacy Reform.”  This event is free and open to the public.

Date: Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Location: ET 202

About this lecture:
The English cryptography manual became a popular genre during the English Civil War and continued to entertain and vex readers through the eighteenth century. Today dismissed by intelligence historians as merely theoretical but not usefully practical, John Wilkins’s Mercury; or The Secret and Swift Messenger (1641) is nonetheless one of the most narratively and cryptographically innovative manuals from the perspective of the history of reading. Staged as a pedagogical text yet riddled with error, misunderstood even by talented cryptologers a generation later, I argue that Mercury exploits political and social interest in codewriting to advocate literacy reform. By comparing Wilkins’s typographical decisions and emphasis on handwriting as an important part of the composition process to posthumous editions and adaptations by later authors like John Falconer, I also find that Mercury simulates the complementary and interdependent, not competing, cultures of manuscript and print.

About Professor Ellison:
Katherine Ellison is an alumna of IUPUI and an Assistant Professor of English at Illinois State University and Director of the Island 18 Historical & Digital Literacy Project, an in-progress virtual reconstruction of eighteenth-century London. Her study of literary responses to information multiplicity in the early eighteenth-century media state, Fatal News: Reading and Information Overload in Early 18th-Century Literature, was published by Routledge in 2006. She has also published in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Book History, Educational Research, Academic Exchange Quarterly and has chapters forthcoming in Maternal Pedagogies and Sex and Death in the Eighteenth Century. Ellison has worked as a designer and codewriter on a variety of digital historical projects, including The Civil War in the Illustrated London News, the Emory Women Writers Resource Project, and the The French Revolution Pamphlet Collection. Her current research focuses on late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century intelligence networks and the textual histories of cryptography manuals. Ellison, Holly Faith Nelson, and Kit Kincade are co-editing a forthcoming edition for AMS Press on New Approaches to Defoe.

Young Hamlet

Dates: February 4-12, 2011
Tickets:$15 Adults, $8 Students
Time: 7:30 PM
Buy tickets online: http://www.indyfringe.org/calendar/event/young-hamlet#tickets

Hoosier Bard Productions and the IUPUI Oxford Shakespeare present Young Hamlet directed by Terri Bourus (with consultant Tim Hardy)

“Few audiences have had the pleasure of seeing Shakespeare’s first Hamlet–until now. The IndyFringe Theatre is proud to bring to the Indianapolis community the story of a young revenger–a bright, strong prince called home from university to find his father murdered, and his mother married to his uncle. There can be no future for Hamlet, or for his love for Ofelia, or for the kingdom of Denmark until the corruption is rooted out. This Hamlet does not hesitate, but moves swiftly towards the play’s ultimate tragic conclusion. Based on Shakespeare’s earliest script, written when the playwright was no more than twenty-three, this is a Hamlet you have never seen before. A Hamlet you will never forget!”

Gray’s of Achill Island: 175 Years in the Life of an Irish Guest House

Gail Grainne Whitchurch
Department of Communication Studies

Friday, January 14, 2011, 4:30-5:30 pm
IUPUI Campus Center 268
420 University Blvd.
Indianapolis, IN  46202

This richly-illustrated interdisciplinary presentation traces the
community history of a venerable Irish guest house from the
construction of its buildings by the proselytizing Achill Mission in
the 1830s, to a pair of Victorian-era family-owned hotels, through the
20th century as a popular tourist destination, to Ireland’s economic
boom of the early 21st century, and the crash that followed.

Please make a reservation at 278-1839 or
phair@iupui.edu

Cookies and coffee served at the event.

The Sabbatical Speaker Series is a part of the 2010-2011 Research
Speaker Series sponsored by the IU School of Liberal Arts.

Friday, October 22, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 23, 7:30 p.m.

Basile Theater, Indiana Historical Society
TICKETS: $15 GENERAL ADMISSION; $10 STUDENTS W/ STUDENT ID
TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR.  CASH ONLY.
INFORMATION:TBOURUS@IUPUI.EDU
All proceeds go to the Actors from the London Stage.

Supported by the Office of Student Life at IUPUI, the The New Oxford Shakespeare Project, the British and Irish Studies Group, the Department of Communication Studies, the Department of English, the Department of HIstory, and the Department of Philosophy at IUPUI.

For more information, visit http://www.iupui.edu/~british/AFLS.html.

via http://www.emindy.org/piffaro.htm

Program Three, 43rd Indianapolis Early Music Festival
Friday, July 9, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Frank & Katrina Basile Theater at the Indiana History Center on the Downtown Canal, 450 West Ohio Street   Tickets

Waytes: English Music for a Renaissance Town Band

Since the reign of Edward III in the early 14th century, the town waytes, or shawm players, enjoyed a prominent position in the musical life of every major city in England.  Like the stadtpfeiffer in Germany, the piffari in Italy and the ministriles in Spain, the waytes in the major towns of England were the finest musicians in the country, the very emblem of professional music making. From about 1550 onwards, the waytes of London enjoyed a reputation and pride of place unparalleled on the British Isles. During this time their talents became more diverse, as they added recorders, cornetto, dulcian and stringed instruments, even singers, to their standard arsenal of shawms and sackbuts.

This concert follows this fabled band through its musical adventures in the thriving metropolis of London from the latter half of the16th into the early 17th centuries.  Whether ceremonial occasions of State, intimate soirees of the chamber or raucous parades in the streets, these waytes adorned each event with music appropriate to the moment, through the panoply of instrumental color available to them.

The concert will draw, as did the London waytes, on the works of some of the greatest English composers of the time, including William Byrd, Robert Parsons, Thomas Tallis, Thomas Weelkes, and John Mundy, among others, and will also include anonymous masquing ayres and Piffaro’s own arrangements of some of the great, popular tunes of the day.

Joan Kimball & Bob Wiemken, Artistic Co-Directors
Grant Herreid – lute, guitar, shawm, recorder, percussion
Greg Ingles – sackbut, recorder, krumhorn
Joan Kimball – shawm, bagpipes, recorders, krumhorn, dulcian
Christa Patton – shawm, recorder, bagpipe, krumhorn, harp
Daphna Mor – shawm, bagpipes, recorders, dulcian
Bob Wiemken – dulcian, recorders, douçaine, krumhorn, percussion
Tom Zajac – bagpipes, recorders, sackbut, pipe & tabor, percussion

London Waytes:
Music for a Renaissance Wind Band from the time of Elizabeth I

The song called trumpets……..Robert Parsons (c.1530-1570)
shawms, sackbuts, percussion

I come, sweet birds………………Robert Jones (fl. 1597-1615)

Rossignol………………………………anonymous (early 17th c.)

The nightingale so soon as April bringeth……..Thomas Bateson (c.1570/75-1630)

In midst of woods/The blackbird…………John Mundy (c.1555-1630)
recorders, lute, harp

Siderum rector…………………………. William Byrd (1543-1623)

Domine non sum dignus………………………………..Byrd
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian

Masquing Ayre: The Nobleman…Robert Johnson (c.1583-1633)
The king’s almaine………………………anonymous (early 17th c.)
Masquing Ayre: The standing masque…anonymous (early 17th c.)
Masquing Ayre: Cupararee or Graysin…anonymous (early 17th c.)
Antimasque:  The goates masque……anonymous (early 17th c.)
Antimasque:  Second witch’s dance …anonymous (early 17th c.)
recorder, sackbut, dulcian, lute, harp, bagpipes, pipe & tabor, guitar

The Indian weed is withered quite……………anonymous ballad tune (arr. G. Herreid)

Come, sirrah, Jack ho………….Thomas Weelkes (b.?-d.1623)
Hackney……………………….Clement Woodcock (fl.c.1575)
voice, douçaine, krumhorns

Pavane…………………..Augustin Bassano (fl. c.1603)
Almandes……………………………Anonymous, early 17th c.
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian, bagpipe, guitar, percussion

INTERMISSION

Tan tara ran tara, cries Mars…………………………Weelkes
Young Cupid hath proclaim’d……………………….Weelkes
Cease sorrowes now……………………………….Weelkes
Three times a day my prayer……………………………Weelkes
shawms, sackbuts, dulcian

Sermone blando……………………………………Byrd
Fantasia a 3………………………………………Byrd
O nata lux de lumine……………..Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)
recorders

Goddesses…………………….Anonymous, arr. Piffaro
La bounette…from The Mulliner Book (publ. c.1570), arr. Piffaro
recorders, lute, harp, sackbut, dulcian, bagpipes, guitar, percussion

Piffaro, The Renaissance Band
Joan Kimball & Bob Wiemken, directors

Grant Herreid – lute, guitar, shawm, recorder, voice, percussion
Greg Ingles – sackbut, recorder, krumhorn, percussion
Joan Kimball – shawm, recorder, dulcian, bagpipes, krumhorn
Christa Patton – shawm, recorder, harp, krumhorn, bagpipes
Bob Wiemken – shawm, dulcian, recorder, krumhorn, percussion
Tom Zajac – sackbut, recorder, krumhorn, bagpipes, pipe & tabor
With guest:
Daphna Mor – recorder, percussion

World-renowned for its highly polished performances as the pied-pipers of Early Music, Piffaro, The Renaissance Band has delighted audiences throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and South America.  The ensemble, founded in 1980, recreates the elegant sounds of the official, professional wind bands of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods, as well as the rustic music of the peasantry.  Piffaro’s ever-expanding collection of shawms, sackbuts, dulcians, recorders, krumhorns, bagpipes, lutes, guitars, harps, and a variety of percussion, are careful reconstructions of instruments from the period.

Under the direction of Joan Kimball and Bob Wiemken, Piffaro tours extensively in the United States and Europe, and has performed for all the major early music series and festivals, as well as many college and community series, in the US.  The ensemble made its European debut at Tage Alter Musik in Regensburg, Germany in 1993, and has returned to Europe each season for numerous festival appearances.  In addition, the Band produces its own concert series in Philadelphia, with four to five programs per year, bringing to their series some of the finest talents in early music performance as their guests.  Excerpts from these concerts are regularly broadcast nationwide on National Public Radio’s Performance Today.

In addition to its concert and recording efforts, Piffaro is active in the field of education.  Members of the ensemble perform regularly throughout the year for elementary, middle and high school students, and hold master classes and workshops for college students and adult amateurs.   The group has also been involved in week-long residencies, working with small groups of students on recorders, or their modern band instruments, and teaching Renaissance dance.  For these efforts, Piffaro was awarded Early Music America’s annual “Early Music brings history alive” award in 2003.

Piffaro has recorded for Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv Produktion, and Dorian Recordings.  A recent recording is a collaboration with the renowned Belgian vocal ensemble Capilla Flamenca and features the music of Jacob Obrecht, released on the Eufoda label. A recording of VESPERS, a new work by composer Kile Smith, was released last season to critical acclaim (“a masterpiece of the deepest kind” – Audiofile Audition) on the PARMA/Navona label, and a CD of English music, “WAYTES”, also on PARMA/Navona, was released in January of 2010.  In addition, selections of Piffaro’s music can be heard on the Wyndham Hill and Passacaille labels.

Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with Hesperus, Piffaro, ARTEK, and My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort, and has appeared with the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Apollo’s Fire, Brandywine Baroque, and the New York Consort of Viols. He teaches at Mannes College of Music in New York, and directs the New York Continuo Collective.  He is a lecturer in the performance of early opera at Yale University, where he was music director for their recent production of Cavalli’s Giasone. He is a stage director for the Accademia d’Amore baroque opera workshop with Stephen Stubbs, and has played continuo theorbo, lute and baroque guitar for the Chicago Opera Theater, Aspen Music Festival, Portland Opera, and New York City Opera, as well as the opera programs at Julliard, Curtis, and Mannes conservatories. Grant has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music with Ex Umbris and the plucked-string group Ensemble Viscera.

In sixth grade Greg Ingles decided he wanted to play a brass instrument in band, but since his older sister already played the French horn, he decided to take up the trombone.  Greg attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy and went on to graduate college from the Oberlin Conservatory.  Two days after graduation Greg won the position of Solo Trombone in the Hofer Symphoniker in Hof, Germany.  He returned to the United States and completed both a Master’s and Doctorate degree in trombone performance at SUNY Stony Brook.  It was during his graduate work that Greg became acquainted with the sackbut and historical performance.  Soon after beginning his early music studies Greg became a member of Piffaro, the Renaissance Band.  He has since played with such ensembles as the American Bach Soloists, Chatham Baroque, Chiaroscuro, Concerto Palatino, and Tafelmusik.  Greg is also a member of Ciaramella and has just completed a recording with this group on the Yarlung Records label.  Mr. Ingles has also recorded with Anakekta, Centaur, Dorian, Kleos, and reZound.  Greg is the adjunct trombone professor at Hofstra University and also teaches sackbut at the Madison Early Music Festival each summer.

Joan Kimball, co-director and a founding member of the ensemble, gave full time to early music performance in 1980 after a number of years as an educator.  She teaches recorder and early winds to children and adults, is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private recorder students and recorder ensembles, and organizes Piffaro’s educational programs.  In addition, she collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson of New York City on the construction of Medieval and Renaissance bagpipes and is a maker of double reeds for Renaissance shawms, dulcians and capped winds.  Joan teaches bagpipe, recorder and double reed classes at summer music workshops and festivals.  In addition to her recordings with Piffaro she can also be heard on Vanguard Classical, Eudora and Vox Amadeus.

Originally from Israel, recorder player Daphna Mor began her music studies at the age of eight.
She has performed throughout Europe, Israel and the United States, giving solo recitals, as well as concerts with groups such as The New York Collegium and the Washington Bach Ensemble. She has also won numerous awards: First Prize in the Settimane Musicali de Lugano Solo Competition and twice the winner of the Boston Conservatory Concerto Competition, in 1996 and in 2000. Daphna received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Boston Conservatory, is a graduate of Thelma Yelin School for the Arts, and was awarded the prestigious status of “Privileged Musician” for her army service with the Israeli Defense Force.  A strong advocate for contemporary music for the recorder, Daphna has premiered numerous new pieces for solo recorder and ensembles, and is a founding member of The New Amsterdam Recorder Trio.  In addition, she has been involved in recording and performances of film scoring, popular, and world music, and as a world music musician has been seen on prestigious stages as ‘Summer Stage-Central Park’,NY, and in festivals throughout the United States, and in Canada, Poland, Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Greece and Israel.  Daphna has been involved in education and outreach, working with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The New York Collegium.  She also teaches and coaches at early music workshops and festivals.
Christa Patton specializes in early wind instruments as well as historical harps and has toured the Americas, Europe and Japan with New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, Ex Umbris and Piffaro the Renaissance band. As a baroque harpist Christa has appeared with Apollo’s Fire, The King’s Noyse, The Toronto Consort, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, La Nef, and ARTEK as well as productions of Monteverdi’s “Ulisse”, “Poppea”, and “L’Orfeo” with the New York City Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Tafelmusik, and Opera Atelier.  Christa has led workshops at the Madison Early Music Festival, Pinewoods Early Music Camp, and the Medieval Summer Institute at the Longy School of Music. A former Fulbright scholar, Christa studied the Italian baroque harp at the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan, Italy with historical harp specialist, Mara Galassi. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate at SUNY Stony Brook with early keyboard specialist, Arthur Haas.

Robert  Wiemken, a French hornist for many years before turning to early music and period instrument performance, is now a multi-instrumentalist, focusing on the recorders and double reed instruments of the late Medieval through the Baroque periods, most notably the Renaissance shawm and dulcian, or curtal, and the Baroque bassoon. He is currently co-director of Piffaro, and also directs the early music ensembles at Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music and Dance in Philadelphia. He has performed with numerous ensembles, including New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, the Grande Band, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, King’s Noyse, the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and others. He has recorded on the Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Records, Vanguard Classics, Windham Hill, Pasacaille and Eufoda labels. He is also a noted reed maker, specializing in the double reeds of the medieval through Baroque periods.

Tom Zajac has performed on historic winds and percussion as a member of several groups throughout the years-Piffaro, Ex Umbris, the Waverly Consort and New York’s Ensemble for Early Music-touring extensively and appearing in concert series and festivals in Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the United States.  As a guest artist Tom appears frequently with the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Newberry Consort, Hesperus, and other leading US ensembles.  As a director, Tom has an abiding interest in the confluence of historical and socio-cultural approaches to music making, working happily in the realm where time and place meet.  He has done research and performance projects on Colonial Latin-American music as well as on the music of the three religious cultures of pre-expulsion Spain, and music in Eastern Europe, from Poland to the Ottoman court of 16th to 19th-century Turkey.  Recent performance projects include a 13th-century music-theater piece, the Tournoi de Chauvency with the French-American company Ensemble Aziman, and work as percussionist for recent Boston Early Music Festival opera productions.  Tom directs the Medieval/Renaissance week of the San Francisco Early Music Society workshops in Sonoma, CA, teaches at other workshops throughout the US, and directs the early music ensembles at Wellesley College near his home in Boston.

Program Notes

The term “wait” variously spelled “wayt” or “wayte”, from the old French “gaite”, carried a variety of meanings throughout its history. In the 13th and 14th centuries it referred to the watchman who stood at the walled gate of a town or castle and blew a horn to signal the approach of people requesting admittance. This “wait” however was not considered a musician. There is good evidence that the horn the watchman played was at least by the late 14th century a shawm. Thus, references to a “wayte-pipe”, as in the Black Book of the Exchequer, most certainly indicate a treble size of the shawm family. It followed then that any player of the treble shawm could be called a “wait”, whether a watchman or not. By the 15th century the plural of the term was in general use to indicate the group of civic minstrels employed by the towns and courts throughout Renaissance England.

The waits’ principal instruments, in harmony with the historical evolution of the word, were those of the loud band, including first shawms, but then adding slide trumpet and eventually sackbuts. In the late 15th century a five-part ensemble would have been comprised of three shawms and two sackbuts. By the 16th century, with the emergence of new instruments, the waits expanded their arsenals, as did the continental bands, with dulcians, recorders, krumhorns and cornetti, and the members often doubled on stringed instruments as well, especially lute and harp, but occasionally also viola da gamba and fiddle. Some of these bands also included singers, or the band members themselves sang in addition to their instrumental responsibilities. It is this later ramification of the London waits, the latter half of the 16th century into the early 17th, that is the focus of this program.

The repertoire available to these waits was extensive. Like their forebears both in England and on the continent, vocal music offered them a considerable amount of repertoire, including hymns, motets, madrigals and other secular song types. But, by the end of the 16th century these waits could turn to a sizeable amount of composed, instrumental music as well, in the form of fantasias, dances both solo and ensemble, masquing airs, canons and the like.  One manuscript in particular, currently housed in the Fitzwilliam Library in London, purports to contain repertoire specifically for the waits, as opposed to other instrumental ensembles prominent at the time, such as the viola da gamba consort, for which there exists a great wealth of music, or the broken consort so popular in England. Called, subsequently, the Fitzwilliam ‘Wind Band’ manuscript, the collection provides one clear indication of what these waits were playing. Much of the music is in six parts, or more, reflecting the larger size of the ensembles during this period. The Pavane and Almandes that end the first half of the program come from this important source.

The first piece on the program harks back, perhaps, to the earlier historical function of the waits as signal men. Robert Parson’s A Song Called Trumpets, unlike most English instrumental consort music of the mid-16th century, is laid out with two treble and two bass voices, with two equal sized inner voices as well. The relatively narrow and low tessitura of each of the voices suggests that the piece was written with wind instruments in mind, rather than, say, members of the viola da gamba family. In the fashion of much continental wind playing of the time, we have taken the piece up a fifth from its original pitch, where it might surely have been intended to have been played, so that the treble shawms actually sound in the higher register that trumpets frequented, where it serves as a striking herald of things to come.

Parsons was a highly regarded composer of his time who worked for a period of his life in London. His compositions proved influential on many of the later 16th c. English composers, especially William Byrd.  Unfortunately, Parsons fell victim, still a young man, to a boating accident while navigating the flood-prone river crossing at Newark. A comment by a Robert Dow in the late 1580’s reflects what was perhaps the common reaction throughout the musical world to this unfortunate event.

Qui tantus primo Parsone in flore fuisti,(Parsons, you who were so great in the first flower of life,
Quantus in autumno in morere fores.How great you would have been in [life’s] autumn, if you had not died.)

One composer who made it well into the autumn of his life was William Byrd, a figure whose reputation and works hardly need introduction to early music devotees. Though his date of birth is never mentioned, Byrd makes the comment in his will of November, 1622, that he was ‘in the 80th yeare of myne age’, which puts his birth somewhere in 1543. So great was the impact of this musical genius that he was named by one admirer ‘Brittanicae Musicae Parens’, or ‘Father of British music’. The declaration of the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal, in recording the composer’s death, took this one step further and called him simply ‘a Father of Musick’.

Of Byrd’s two Latin-texted motets on this program, the 5-part Siderum rector, is the earliest, published in his Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur (London, 1575), shortly after he was sworn in as Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, succeeding Parsons following his accidental death. The six-part Domine non sum dignus, particularly apt for performance by the waits, comes from a later publication, the Liber primus sacrarum cantionum [Cantiones sacrae] of 1589, and exhibits Byrd’s mastery over the form. With these motets he is said to have achieved nothing less than the naturalization of the high Renaissance church style in the language of English music.

Another of Byrd’s older contemporaries and major influences was Thomas Tallis.  Born around 1505, Tallis quickly assumed positions of importance in the world of English music and became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal as early perhaps as 1537. As a result, his tenure of service to the royal household spanned the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor and more than half the reign of Elizabeth I. A couplet from his epitaph points to a humble and unassuming man who was undoubtedly deeply respected, both by the four monarchs for whom he worked and by many generations of church musicians afterward.

As he dyd lyve, so also did he dy,
In myld and quyet Sort (O! happy Man)

His O nata lux de lumine perhaps reflects history’s estimation of the man that Tallis was.

If Tallis and Byrd were influenced by the Flemish style of northern polyphony that was the international language of mass and motet, then another composer on this program, Thomas Weelkes, found himself drawn to the new Italian madrigal, already fully adopted by Thomas Morley. Yet Weelkes’ contributions to the genre surpassed Morley’s easy fluency with the style. The three-voiced example, Cease sorrows now, comes from a 1597 publication, Weelkes’ first, that broke new ground for the English version of this native Italian form. With this piece, and its radical pathos and chromaticism, Weelkes is said to have introduced a new expressive experience into English composition.

The four madrigals by Weelkes that make up the set in the second half of the program tell a story of sorts based on the texts of the pieces. We cannot perform the words for you, though the music itself reflects the sentiments housed in them. Any good English wait would have tried to convey these sentiments in his instrumental performance of the pieces, as we attempt in this concert. The first, Tan ta ra ran tara, cryes Mars (1608) itself imitates the sounds of battle shawms or trumpets, pitting Mars against Venus in the eternal struggle of man and woman in the metaphor of love as conflict. The second piece, Young Cupid hath proclaim’d a bloody war (1597), continues the love-is-war metaphor, in particular Cupid’s assault on fair Cloris who shuns love’s advances and whose beauty Cupid fears. Cease sorrows now (1597) expresses the mournful plaint and hopeless despair of one of the battle’s victims as he bids a faint farewell to love and life.  Finally, Three times a day (1600) asserts that the struggle will always continue, as the male speaker exclaims his thrice daily prayer that he may gaze on his Thoralis and hopes eternally that he may please and not offend and that she will return his love.

While Weelkes was clearly one of the masters of the madrigal form, numerous other composers tried their hand at it as well.  As in his works, variations on the theme of love provided the majority of madrigals with texts, but numerous others reflected themes of nature, especially about birds.  In our set of “bird” pieces in the first half, the nightingale in Thomas Bateson’s trio mournfully bewails its fate in a sad minor mode, and running musical figures in Robert Jones’ I come, sweet birds, express the swiftness of flight.

Finally, members of the waits most assuredly found themselves involved in the great courtly and theatrical productions within English society, the Masques. Based on allegorical or mythological themes and involving poetry, music and elaborate sets, these entertainments drew upon the best and finest of the musicians employed in the various ensembles of the towns, courts and cathedrals. As dancing was a major aspect of these entertainments, so ensembles like the waits could be called upon collectively to perform a pavane or gaillard or almande, such as those that end the first half. However, there were published a good number of ‘masquing tunes’ for a solo voice, with or without accompaniment, that surely decorated the events at various moments. Pieces like Cupararee or Graysin, The Standing Masque, and The Nobleman, together with the antimasques, The Goates Masque and The Second Witch’s Dance, as well as the two pieces that end the concert, Goddesses and La Bounette offer a brief glimpse into this very English world of popular entertainment.

Bob Wiemken

Saturday, June 26, 2010, 10:00 a.m.
Frank & Katrina Basile Theater at the Indiana History Center on the Downtown Canal, 450 West Ohio Street
Admission Free

http://www.emindy.org/family.htm

Today’s presentation centers on Music in the Life of a Renaissance Courtier Songs and instrumental music from the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

Ensemble Viscera is our guest for IEM’s popular Annual Free Family Concert.  This concert is intended for the entire family and is a wonderful introduction to Early Music.

St. Margaret. Small Chapel, Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

The IUPUI British and Irish Studies Group will be hosting the fourth speaker of our 2009-2010 speakers series on 28 April.  Please join us as Professor Jennifer Lee, Professor of Art History in the Herron School of Art discusses “No Admittance!  Pilgrims’ access to relics in the Miracles of Margaret of Scotland”  This event is free and open to the public.

Date: Wednesday, April 28, 2020
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Location: BS 4087, 4th floor of Bus/Spea building (note revised room location)

About this lecture:
Medieval pilgrimage centers were sites of encounter between groups with conflicting desires. Pilgrims traveled for miles, often independently, to pray at the tombs of the saints, desiring intimate communication with the saints and expecting direct access to the relics.  The custodians of the shrines, however, were charged with maintaining order, protecting the valuable works of art surrounding the tomb, and guarding the relics.  The friction between these interests prompted pilgrims to respond creatively to the art and architecture surrounding the shrine, and led resident clerics to restrict access and to justify the exclusion of pilgrims, while still promoting the cult.  The tensions between pilgrims and the custodians of relics will be explored with specific reference to the Miracles of Margaret of Scotland.

About Professor Lee:
Professor Lee is Associate Dean for Research in the Herron School of Art & Design.  She specializes in Medieval art and architecture, Italian Renaissance art, Medieval pilgrimages, and art in medieval popular culture.  Professor Lee’s research focuses on medieval pilgrimage and pilgrimage badges, especially at London and Canterbury.  She is preparing a book manuscript on the wearing of devotional and secular badges in medieval London.

Lord John Roper, member of the British House of Lords, will present the keynote address at the Midwest Model European Union (MMEU) on Friday, April 16, 2010. The talk, held in the IUPUI Campus Center 450C from 9:30-10:45 a.m., is free and open to the public and presented in conjunction with the West European Studies Program (IU Bloomington).

A member of the British House of Lords since 2000, Lord Roper’s career in the Parliament spans some 40 years. Following his designation as a life peer in 2000, from 2001 and 2005 he was the chief whip for the Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Lords.

MMEU organizer and Professor of Political Science John McCormick says, “Lord Roper’s visit has additional significance because the Liberal Democrats have a strong chance of holding the balance of power following the upcoming British general election, scheduled for May 6. If so, then they could become part of government, most likely in a coalition with Gordon Brown’s Labour Party.”

Lord Roper will speak on “The State of the European Union” to the students and faculty coming to IUPUI for the MMEU from eight universities and one high school In Indiana, Missouri, and Michigan.

2010 marks the 18th year that the MMEU has been held at IUPUI and sponsored by the Department of Political Science in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. The intercollegiate event spans three days, April 15-17, and is the second oldest and second largest Model EU in North America.

McCormick says, “This is the first time we’ve had a keynote speaker with Lord Roper’s stature and experience. His talk will give the students a once in a lifetime learning window into the politics behind the European Union, the biggest economy in the world and the major ally and trading partner of the United States.”

During the MMEU, students assume the roles of prime ministers and presidents, as well as ambassadors, commissioners, ministers and diplomats, and spend 48 hours immersed in political discourse. Through resolving issues, creating ties, and debating policy, the students will strengthen their knowledge of both the politics and the personality of the European Union.

The event operates almost entirely on students’ knowledge of the politics and economics of the countries they represent. The Model EU allows students to apply what they learn in the classroom in a simulation where they are working with students from other universities. Through achieving a greater understanding of what is required of politicians, the students also gain an understanding of the successes and the problems of European integration.

Intense study and practice of the European politics during this event also leaves the students with a deeper understanding of the importance of cross-cultural awareness.

Schools in attendance this year are:

►Ball State University, IN, representing the Netherlands and Sweden
►Grand Valley State University, MI, representing Denmark and Ireland
►International School of Indiana, representing the Czech Republic
►Indiana University Bloomington representing Finland and Germany
►IUPUI representing Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain
►Oakland University, MI, representing Cyprus
►Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, IN, representing Italy
►University of Indianapolis representing France and Hungary
►University of Missouri St Louis representing Portugal and the UK

For additional information about the MMEU, please visit the MMEU Web site.

(re-posted from <http://newscenter.iupui.edu/4603/British-House-of-Lords-Member-Headlines-Model-European-Union-100412>)

Below are a list of publications related to British and Irish Studies and recently published by members of the IUPUI British and Irish Studies Group.

Articles

Robert White, “From Gunmen to Statesmen: The Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin (1916-48),” The Journal of Conflict Studies 27 (Winter 2007 [2009]): 42-50.

Many terrorist groups, it would seem, cause great turmoil but no lasting impact. This might include radical student groups of the 1960s and terrorist organizations of the 1970s. Yet, we know that in some instances political violence, or revolution, does lead to great social change. Consider Cuba as an example. This might suggest that terrorists and revolutionaries face a zero-sum game: total failure or total victory. There is a middle ground, however. The PLO, as an example, has not achieved an independent Palestine, but who in the 1970s would have imagined a Palestinian Authority led by Yasir Arafat. This case study of the Irish Republican Army and it political wing, Sinn Féin, examines this middle ground in Ireland in the 1916-1948 time period.

David L. Weiden, “Judicial Politicization, Ideology, and Activism at the High Courts of the United States, Canada, and Australia,” Political Research Quarterly 20 (2010): 1-13.

This article proposes a new cross-national thesis for judicial decision making. The judicial politicization theory posits that judges on highly politicized high courts will be more likely to decide cases using ideological and attitudinal factors than judges at less politicized courts. The theory holds that informal norms regarding judicial appointment by the executive are more important than the formal selection mechanism in determining whether a judiciary is highly or less politicized. The results show significant attitudinal judicial voting at each high court and strong support for the contention that judges on highly politicized courts are more likely to decide cases ideologically.

David L. Weiden, “Examining the influence of the European Convention on Human Rights in Northern Ireland courts,” The Social Science Journal 46, no. 1 (2009): 150-163.

This article examines the influence of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on the legal culture of litigants and judges in Northern Ireland. The results show that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of judicial review cases based upon the ECHR in the years immediately following implementation of the treaty through the Human Rights Act. However, while there has been an increase in the number of ECHR claims by litigants, judges in Northern Ireland have thus far been reluctant to issue declarations of incompatibility pursuant to the Human Rights Act. Furthermore, a multivariate analysis of the likelihood of Northern Irish judges to rule against the government shows that, controlling for other factors, judges are not more willing to rule against the government when the ECHR is invoked. Overall, it appears that the early influence of the ECHR on Northern Irish law has been greatest in the willingness of litigants to bring judicial review cases based upon the treaty–a development that may portend larger changes in UK jurisprudence in the future.

Books

Jason M. Kelly, The Society of Dilettanti: Archaeology and Identity in the British Enlightenment, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Yale University Press, 2010).

In 1732 a group of elite young men who had met on the grand tour formed a convivial dining club called the Society of Dilettanti. By the middle of the 18th century the Dilettanti took on an influential role in cultural matters, organizing archaeological expeditions, forming the Royal Academy and the British Museum, and ultimately becoming one of the most prominent and influential societies of the British Enlightenment.  This lively and illuminating account is the most detailed analysis of the early Society of Dilettanti to date. Jason M. Kelly places the group at the complex intersection of international and national discourses that shaped the British Enlightenment; thus, it sheds new light on 18th-century grand tourism, elite masculinity, sociability, aesthetics, architecture, and archaeology.

Isaac Land, War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750-1850 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

In this engaging cultural history, War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor gives agency and new meaning to the lives of the men and women who sailed (or claimed to have sailed) during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With adroit argument and elegant prose, Land reinterprets accepted maritime narratives and, as a consequence, forces us to re-consider what was at stake in the larger British context. By charting a course to bring maritime history ashore, Land deftly integrates the maritime into larger national narratives about British identity.
Mary Conley, Associate Professor of History, College of the Holy Cross and Author of From Jack Tar to Union Jack: Naval Manhood in the British Empire, 1870-1918.

John McCormick, Comparative Politics in Transition, 6th ed. (Wadsworth Publishing, 2009).

This updated edition gives all the latest information on international politics from Africa to the Middle East to Latin America. Unlike most other texts, COMPARATIVE POLITICS IN TRANSITION, Sixth Edition, focuses closely on the non-Western world. The book also explores the political influence of Islam with a new chapter on Iran. By taking a story-based approach, this edition provides an up-to-date and accurate understanding of international politics.