Category: music
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MySpace
I left Facebook, for a variety of reasons, last autumn and I haven’t really missed it. But I have just rediscovered my MySpace page. I had completely forgotten that I’d had it, if I’m honest. I’ve just spent a while playing with it, but the reason that I wanted to mention it here is that,…
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Final Countdown
This afternoon I had my mock viva, which was an interesting experience. It was reassuring, in that I survived and there was only one question that I felt I completely flunked. That said, there were several others that brought home to me the need to be certain of my own position, which of course is…
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Viva preparation
This morning I lifted my thesis from the bookshelf and looked at it for the first time since I put it there in September. I have to admit that there is a certain amount of pride just from in holding it in my hands. It’s a substantial piece of work and represents a good three…
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Roots
Where did my thesis come from? It was born of the twin passions for history and music that go back to childhood, although I’d be the first to agree that it neither had a trouble-free gestation (it’s something of a mutation), nor was it entirely my idea. They are bound up together in my love…
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Easter vacation
With the children on their Easter break, work over the last couple of weeks has been rather hit and miss. Mainly miss, to be honest. But I have spent some time working on a short historiographical piece about the relationship between ballads and news, which I’m happy to say is nearly finished. In the…
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Easter holidays
This week is the first week of my children’s Easter holiday, so I am juggling childcare with work. Cramming little bits of work into wherever it will fit isn’t easy and it certainly doesn’t allow for extended research or writing, for example. But there are little things that I can do. I went through a…
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Musical musings part 2.
After last week’s musical musings, I had great fun on Thursday discussing the terminology of sixteenth century music with my music supervisor. I freely admit to butterflies before the meeting, but in a change of insect metaphor, I came out buzzing. I think we have come up with a solution concerning how to talk about…
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Musical musings
Last week, during my panel meeting, one of my supervisors pointed out that my use of the phrase ‘based on the tonic, sub-dominant and dominant chords’ to describe a seventeenth-century tune was anachronistic, but conceded that finding terms to describe Renaissance music was difficult. We arranged to discuss it further next week, but in the…
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The British Library
I spent this week working in the British Library, looking at lots of old manuscripts and some printed music. I’ve been looking for ballads in commonplace books and found some really interesting stuff. Yesterday I looked at the two oldest known pieces of English sheet music, which was amazing. Highlight of the week, though, had…
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