Ancients and moderns in medieval music theory: from Guido of Arezzo to Jacobus

ABSTRACT

Medieval discourse about both the theory and practice of music featured much debate about the views of moderni and antiqui from when Guido of Arezzo devised a new way of recording pitch in the early eleventh century to the complaints of Jacobus in the early fourteenth century about new forms of measured music in the ars nova. There was also a shift from a Boethian notion that practical music was a manifestation of cosmic music, towards a more Aristotelian model, that privileged music as sensory experience. That this could have a profound effect on human emotion was articulated by Johannes de Grocheio writing about music c. 1270 and Guy of Saint-Denis soon after 1300 about plainchant. Jacobus, writing in the 1320s, was troubled by this shift in thinking about music not as reflections of transcendent realities, but as sounds of human invention that served to move the soul. He argued that musical patterns should reflect a transcendent harmony that was both cosmic and celestial.     

LA-ICP-MS analysis of quartzite from the Upper Gunnison Basin,Colorado

We report the results of LA-ICP-MS analysis of 402 quartzite samples representing 48 collection loci in the Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB), Colorado and determine the extent to which the sources can be geochemically discriminated from one another using this non-destructive technique. The ability to differentiate among the sources would open the door to provenance studies of the quartzite chipped-stone tools and debitage that constitute 95% or more of most of the 3000-plus prehistoric site assemblages documented in the UGB. Our samples represent prehistorically quarried and non-quarried quartzite sources, including outcrop (primary) and gravel (secondary) deposits. The results reveal spatial and chronological trends in quartzite elemental composition that can be exploited for provenance determinations of quartzite artifacts from UGB sites, albeit using an assemblage-based sourcing strategy that differs from the familiar approach of “matching” obsidian artifacts to their statistically likeliest geological source. We offer a preliminary version of a sourcing protocol for UGB quartzite.     

The Transformation of Labor Relations in Russian Industry: The Influence of Regional Factors in the Iron and Steel Industry

The author examines the role played by the economic geography of the former Soviet Union in the evolution of labor relations in Russian industry, using the iron and steel industry as a case study. More specifically, three regional factors are analyzed as they affect enterprise economic strategies, organization, and management-labor relations: (1) the inherited industrial structure; (2) the degree of product specialization at the regional level; and (3) the level and sophistication of regional political and labor structures combined with the presence (or lack of same) of a “regional agenda.” These factors are examined within the context of a model predicting several possible variants of post-communist labor relations at the enterprise level. 36 references.     

Who is entitled to ‘earn sovereignty'? Legitimacy and regime support in Abkhazia and Nagorno‐Karabakh

Abkhazia and Nagorno‐Karabakh are internationally unrecognised political entities, or so‐called de facto states, that have emerged as a result of the incomplete and contested state‐formation of their parent states and of the secessionist movements that emerged in the power vacuum of the post‐Soviet space. In addition to examining the conventional reliance on the self‐determination principle, usually followed by a call for international recognition (as often practised by emerging sovereigns), this article aims to survey whether these political entities have proved that they embody ‘rightful authority’ as such and whether they ‘have earned their sovereignty’. In other words, it attempts to examine the self‐determination claims in Abkhazia and Nagorno‐Karabakh based on legitimacy criteria that are widely accepted for liberal democratic societies using an analysis of the respective issues as they were represented in focus‐group discussions in these two regions.     

Multiculture,middle class competencies and friendship practices in super-diverse geographies

In this paper we use a small number of in-depth interviews with parents with primary school children to examine social mixing and friendship practices in two super-diverse North London boroughs. In these complex geographical contexts, characterized by gentrification processes and old and new migrations, we suggest that primary schools are convergent places where adults and children from different backgrounds are likely to meet and interact, and the paper explores the extent to which adults and children, thrown together in and through these sites, negotiate relationships with those who are differently socially and culturally situated to themselves. Informed by the interview narratives, the paper highlights the importance of focusing on the micro, quotidian ways in which differences in social and/or ethnic background shape those relationships and it explores some instances of the ways in which those differences are routinely encountered, managed and/or avoided. In this way the paper contributes theoretical and empirical nuance to current concerns around difference and diversity and the interactions of complex urban populations by ‘adding’ social class to everyday multiculture perspectives and everyday multiculture perspectives to urban middle class debates.