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Joao Rodrigues sailed from Portugal to Japan in 1577, and there
entered the Jesuit novitiate and was ordained priest. He met
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the virtual ruler of Japan, in 1591, and from
that time became the missionaries' spokesman in dealings with
Japanese authorities. He was also involved in negotiations
concerning the bulk sale of Chinese silk in Japan, and commercial
and political rivalries led to his eventual expulsion from the
country in 1610. Rodrigues spent the rest of his life in Macao and
the interior of China, dying in 1633. Renowned for his fluency in
spoken Japanese, Rodrigues earned a place in the history of
Japanese-European cultural relations by publishing a Portuguese
grammar of the Japanese language (Nagasaki, 1604-1608), followed by
a revised edition (Macao, 1620). Both works provide valuable
information about Japanese spoken in the early 17th century.
Rodrigues also provided the draft used as a basis for the official
history of the Christian mission in Japan. To set this work in
context he composed two books on various aspects of Japanese life -
geography, customs, clothing, science, architecture, art, and,
above all, the tea ceremony. The present volume provides annotated
translations of these two books, together with an introduction
assessing Rodrigues's contribution to the understanding of Japanese
life and culture in the early 17th century.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: A Research and Information Guide is a
valuable tool for any scholar, performer, or music student
interested in accessing the most pertinent resources on the life,
works, and cultural context of the composer. It is an updated,
annotated bibliography of resources on the biographical, musical,
and religious aspects of Mendelssohn's life.
Goethe's Faust, a work which has attracted the attention of
composers since the late eighteenth century and played a vital role
in the evolution of vocal, operatic and instrumental repertoire in
the nineteenth century, hashad a seminal impact in musical realms.
That Goethe's poetry has proved pivotal for the development of the
nineteenth-century Lied has long been acknowledged. Less
acknowledged is the seminal impact in musical realms of Goethe's
Faust, a work which has attractedthe attention of composers since
the late eighteenth century and played a vital role in the
evolution of vocal, operatic and instrumental repertoire in the
nineteenth century. While Goethe longed to have Faust set to
musicand considered only Mozart and perhaps Meyerbeer as being
equal to the task, by the end of his life he had abandoned hope
that he would live to witness a musical setting of his text.
Despite this, a floodtide of musical interpretations of Goethe's
Faust came into existence from Beethoven to Schubert, Schumann to
Wagner and Mahler, and Gounod to Berlioz; and a broad trajectory
can be traced from Zelter's colourful description of the first
setting ofGoethe's Faust to Alfred Schnittke's Faust opera (1993).
This book explores the musical origins of Goethe's Faust and the
musical dimensions of its legacy. It uncovers the musical furore
caused by Goethe's Faust and considers why his polemical text has
resonated so strongly with composers. Bringing together leading
musicologists and Germanists, the book addresses a wide range of
issues including reception history, the performative challenges of
writing music for Faust, the impact of the legend on composers'
conceptual thinking, and the ways in which it has been used by
composers to engage with other contemporary intellectual concepts.
Constituting the richest examination to date of the musicality of
language and form in Goethe's Faust and its musical rendering from
the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries, the book will appeal to
music, literary and Goethe scholars and students alike. LORRAINE
BYRNE BODLEY is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Maynooth
University and President of the Society for Musicology in Ireland.
Contributors: Mark Austin, Lorraine Byrne Bodley, NicholasBoyle,
John Michael Cooper, Siobhan Donovan, Osman Durrani, Mark
Fitzgerald, John Guthrie, Heather Hadlock, Julian Horton, Ursula
Kramer, Waltraud Meierhofer, Eftychia Papanikolaou, David Robb,
Christopher Ruth, Glenn Stanley, Martin Swales, J. M. Tudor
This book serves as an introduction to the Cretaceous geology and
palaeontology of south-central Africa, covering the whole of
Southern and Eastern Africa and Angola. Fifty two plates illustrate
almost 1000 species and provide a field guide to the macrofossils
of the subcontinent. The book will be of value to field geologists,
students and non-specialists with an interest in the natural world.
A bibliography of the Cretaceous palaeontology and stratigraphy of
the subcontinent is provided. Features: Provides a concise account
of the Cretaceous geology for 13 African regions Includes beautiful
illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography Fossils are
presented in stratigraphical order, allowing easy determination of
the age deposits.
Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was a genius whose wide-ranging
achievements are at last receiving the recognition that they
deserve. Long overshadowed by such eminent contemporaries as Sir
Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren, Hooke's own seminal
contributions to science, architecture and technology are now being
acclaimed in their own right. Curator of Experiments to the Royal
Society when it was chartered in 1662 and author of the famous
Micrographia (1665), Hooke also showed unparalleled ingenuity in
designing machines and instruments, and played a crucial role as
Surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire. This volume
represents a benchmark in the study of Hooke, bringing together a
comprehensive set of studies of different aspects of his life,
thought and artistry. Its sections deal with Hooke's life and
reputation; his contributions to celestial mechanics and astronomy,
and to speculative natural philosophy; the instruments that he
designed; and his work in architecture and construction. The
introduction places the studies in the context of our current
understanding of Hooke and his milieu, while the book also contains
a comprehensive bibliography. In all, it will be an invaluable
resource for all those interested in a figure whose complexity and
importance are becoming clear after centuries of neglect.
The first in-depth study of Mendelssohn's two settings of Goethe's
Die erste Walpurgisnacht, in the context of scenes from Goethe's
Faust and other works. This paperback edition of Mendelssohn,
Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night addresses tolerance and acceptance
in the face of cultural, political, and religious strife. Its point
of departure is the Walpurgis Night. The Night, also known as
Beltane or May Eve, was supposedly an annual witches' Sabbath that
centered around the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz
Mountains. After exploring how a notoriously pagan celebration came
to be named after the Christian missionary St. Walpurgis (ca.
710-79), John Michael Cooper discusses the Night's treatments in
several closely interwoven works by Goethe and Mendelssohn. His
book situates those works in their immediate personal
andprofessional contexts, as well as among treatments by a wide
array of other artists, philosophers, and political thinkers,
including Voltaire, Lessing, Shelley, Heine, Delacroix, and
Berlioz. In an age of decisive political and religious conflict,
Walpurgis Night became a heathen muse: a source of spiritual
inspiration that was neither specifically Christian, nor Jewish,
nor Muslim. And Mendelssohn's and Goethe's engagements with it
offer new insightsinto its role in European cultural history, as
well as into issues of political, religious, and social identity --
and the relations between cultural groups -- in today's world. John
Michael Cooper is Professor of Music at Southwestern University and
author of Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony (Oxford University
Press).
Whether they are called creation myths or origin stories, children love
these highly imaginative tales of the origins of people, animals and
the natural world. This anthology features 14 such tales, with a focus
on the animals, people and breathtaking natural beauty of Africa. It
includes the San people of Southern Africa’s striking story of how the
stars and Milky Way were formed, as well as tales explaining how
hippopotamus came to live in the water, how Jackal got his black
saddle, how Hyena got his characteristic limping gait, and more.
This book serves as an introduction to the Cretaceous geology and
palaeontology of south-central Africa, covering the whole of
Southern and Eastern Africa and Angola. Fifty two plates illustrate
almost 1000 species and provide a field guide to the macrofossils
of the subcontinent. The book will be of value to field geologists,
students and non-specialists with an interest in the natural world.
A bibliography of the Cretaceous palaeontology and stratigraphy of
the subcontinent is provided. Features: Provides a concise account
of the Cretaceous geology for 13 African regions Includes beautiful
illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography Fossils are
presented in stratigraphical order, allowing easy determination of
the age deposits.
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