During lockdown we launched our own lecture series. The guest speakers are members of Gloucestershire Cambridge Society. A diversity of expertise exists among us, and we are proud to share some of that knowledge. The invited audience are members of the Society and their guests.
Below are the lectures already held:
Below are the lectures already held:
Perceptions of Colour by Rachel Beckett (St John's, 1985)
Date of Lecture: Tuesday 4 May 2021
Since Sir Isaac Newton’s famous discovery that white light contains the full visible spectrum, the number of colours in the rainbow has been arbitrarily set at seven. Standard colour Venn diagrams show six colours (primary and secondary). Yet actually, we can all see thousands of different colours. Why do we find it so difficult to define them? Could it be that there are variants in our perception? Red-green colour blindness is well known, but does this common genetic variant perhaps benefit the carriers? Since we are all limited by our own visual capacity, Rachel set out to benchmark and evaluate her own colour experiences, and this has raised some interesting questions that merit further research.
Date of Lecture: Tuesday 4 May 2021
Since Sir Isaac Newton’s famous discovery that white light contains the full visible spectrum, the number of colours in the rainbow has been arbitrarily set at seven. Standard colour Venn diagrams show six colours (primary and secondary). Yet actually, we can all see thousands of different colours. Why do we find it so difficult to define them? Could it be that there are variants in our perception? Red-green colour blindness is well known, but does this common genetic variant perhaps benefit the carriers? Since we are all limited by our own visual capacity, Rachel set out to benchmark and evaluate her own colour experiences, and this has raised some interesting questions that merit further research.
Minstrels or Musicians? The Elizabethan Waits by Simon Pickard (Queens', 1973)
Date of Lecture: Tuesday 1 June 2021
The Waits were an intrinsic part of civic life in major towns and cities in England, from as early as 1300 until c.1830, when local government reorganisation led to their disbandment. They were probably at their zenith in Tudor/Elizabethan/Jacobean times. We know about their instruments, their payments, the need for them to have other occupations, their disputes with the authorities etc. We know next to nothing - for certain - about the actual music they played. Nevertheless, much reasonable inference can be made in order to propose a solution to this question. Their performances were probably the only concerted music that most townsfolk would hear. Many of the Waits had an active role in other aspects of life in their towns, and some of them were sufficiently troublesome to find themselves arraigned by the law.
Their status is ambiguous: as civic employees with livery and (often) escutcheons, they were ceremonially significant, but musicians were not highly regarded per se. More than one Elizabethan would have agreed with the Archbishop of Canterbury's Director of Music, Thomas Whythorne, who denigrated 'minstrels', as against 'musicians' such as himself who had a theoretical knowledge of music and were composers, rather than just practical performers.
So much study of Elizabethan music has focused on the likes of Tallis and Byrd that musicians like the Waits have tended to be overlooked. However, very few Elizabethans will have heard the splendid music of the Chapel Royal, or even of the local Cathedral where, as puritanism took hold, there was far less scope for elaborate church music. Yet almost everyone would hear the Waits play, and Thomas Morley made some very complimentary remarks about the City Waits of London. Some recent studies, such as Christopher Marsh's splendid book on 'Music and Society in Early Modern England' (CUP 2010) have begun to pay more sustained attention to the 'jobbing' musician rather than the elite.
Reflecting on the Elizabethan Waits is a good way to explore Elizabethan culture from a less-familiar perspective than usual.
Date of Lecture: Tuesday 1 June 2021
The Waits were an intrinsic part of civic life in major towns and cities in England, from as early as 1300 until c.1830, when local government reorganisation led to their disbandment. They were probably at their zenith in Tudor/Elizabethan/Jacobean times. We know about their instruments, their payments, the need for them to have other occupations, their disputes with the authorities etc. We know next to nothing - for certain - about the actual music they played. Nevertheless, much reasonable inference can be made in order to propose a solution to this question. Their performances were probably the only concerted music that most townsfolk would hear. Many of the Waits had an active role in other aspects of life in their towns, and some of them were sufficiently troublesome to find themselves arraigned by the law.
Their status is ambiguous: as civic employees with livery and (often) escutcheons, they were ceremonially significant, but musicians were not highly regarded per se. More than one Elizabethan would have agreed with the Archbishop of Canterbury's Director of Music, Thomas Whythorne, who denigrated 'minstrels', as against 'musicians' such as himself who had a theoretical knowledge of music and were composers, rather than just practical performers.
So much study of Elizabethan music has focused on the likes of Tallis and Byrd that musicians like the Waits have tended to be overlooked. However, very few Elizabethans will have heard the splendid music of the Chapel Royal, or even of the local Cathedral where, as puritanism took hold, there was far less scope for elaborate church music. Yet almost everyone would hear the Waits play, and Thomas Morley made some very complimentary remarks about the City Waits of London. Some recent studies, such as Christopher Marsh's splendid book on 'Music and Society in Early Modern England' (CUP 2010) have begun to pay more sustained attention to the 'jobbing' musician rather than the elite.
Reflecting on the Elizabethan Waits is a good way to explore Elizabethan culture from a less-familiar perspective than usual.
