Current Whereabouts Research Articles

Paradise lost and found: The story of an Irish manuscript in Illinois

abstract: This article draws attention to a nineteenth-century Irish-language manuscript, thought until now by scholars to have been irretrievably lost. The early history of the manuscript is set out and, by careful interrogation of an extant microfilm copy in the National Library of Ireland, the current whereabouts and identity of the manuscript are traced to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, POST-1650 MS 0115, where it has been since 1958. A description of the manuscript is appended to this article.

Smartphone Application for Support Library Operations in the Internet of Things Era

The library can be referred to as a storage place for books and other references. The reference can be in the form of digital storage media. Libraries if not managed properly will cause chaos in the library organization. Many books were lost due to the entry and exit of books that were out of control. Currently, the library is not only a place to store books but can be maximized by managing and adding other digital devices. The use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in libraries adds sophistication to the management of books and library items. In addition, currently many libraries have taken advantage of Internet of Things Technology, by adding various sensors and integrating with cloud-based storage devices. It provides a service that makes it easy for library members to find and track the current whereabouts of books. This research does not only create a library by providing hardware in the form of sensors to be installed in the library. This paper also proposes the use of smartphones as an alternative in replacing sensor hardware. This study uses a QR Code sensor to match the book you are looking for and simulates dancing a book in blocks and bookcases. with augmented reality. The purpose of this research is to make a smart library prototype to make it easier for library members to find books or other references. The results of the experiment to find books and DVDs that have been carried out achieve an accuracy of 83.33%.

The dispersal of Vivian Vaughan Davies Hewitt’s collection of great auk (Pinguinus impennis) eggs

Private collectors and museums have coveted the eggs and skins of the great auk ( Pinguinus impennis) both before and after the species became extinct in 1844. Because of their monetary and scientific value, the provenance of most great auk eggs and skins is well documented. In the 1930s and 1940s one wealthy collector, Vivian Vaughan Davies Hewitt (1888–1965) amassed no fewer than thirteen great auk eggs (of a total of about 75 known) and four mounted skins (of 78 known). After he died in 1965, the skins and five of the eggs were sold through the dealer Spink & Son Ltd, but the remaining eight eggs remained unsold until 1992 when they were purchased by Dr John Alan (“Jack”) Gibson (1926–2013) of Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, Scotland. Gibson informed several individuals that he intended to donate the eggs to the National Museum of Scotland. This did not happen, however, and the fate of these eggs has, until now, been unclear and undocumented. We present some details of how Gibson acquired and later disposed of the eight great auk eggs, and, where known, their current whereabouts.

“Confronting time out of joint. . . – On economic rationality and imagination”

It is often suggested that today we are living in the “end times.” Confronted by a perpetual incursion of major global crises, we increasingly find ourselves incapable of meaningfully relating to the present, let alone to the future. The forever deferred “end” throws the very idea of time out of joint. Unable to advance, our imagination retreats, with retrograde tendencies taking over both culture and politics. From incessant movie prequels and sequels, through the re-emergence of populist fascist politics, all the way to the return of Cold War rhetoric, we witness our reality becoming increasingly substituted by a string of peculiar rehashings and reunions. History, as we knew it, is no longer “made”; we strain to cling to the past, equating the future with dystopia. Crucially, this problematique of the fading of temporality is not new. In fact, it has got a history of its own. This paper explores our current (a)temporal whereabouts by reflecting upon them from the perspective of their historical trajectory. It does this by revisiting the work of André Gorz—a thinker whose contributions equip us with the insights needed to confront time out of joint effectively and embrace the idea of future. The article argues that the roots of today’s temporal malaise can be found in the process of “economicization,” which subordinated the notion of utopia to its principles, thereby nullifying it. Examining the effects of the unbridled reign of economic rationality over our imagination, it calls for a temporal intervention by means of ecological rationality.

Ingeniøren og de ægyptiske mumier: En kioskbasker fra 1910’erne

Thomas Christiansen: The Engineer and the Egyptian Mummies: A Scoop from the 1910s
 The article contains a wealth of new and valuable information on important ancient Egyptian objects that are today housed and on display in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and the Museum of Ancient Art (Antikmuseet) in Aarhus. Using Mediestream – a service provided by the Royal Library that allows you to access and search more than 35 million digitised Danish newspaper pages – it tells the curious story of a Danish engineer, Jacob Kjeldsen (1873‑1914), and three ancient Egyptian mummiesand coffins from the 21st Dynasty (c. 1070‑950 BCE).
 From the study of these newspapers it emerges that, during a trip to Egypt in 1910, Kjeldsen had acquired three mummies and coffins in Luxor from Mohammed Abd er-Rasul – a son of the infamous antiquities dealer Mohammed Ahmed Abd er-Rasul – who had discovered them in a tomb in Deir el-Bahari. Shortly after Kjeldsen’s return to Copenhagen, descriptions of the objects began to circulate in the press, and ValdemarSchmidt (1836‑1925), the first Danish Egyptologist, acquired the coffin and mummy of a priest of Amun by the name of Khonshotep for the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (inv. ÆIN 1069).
 During the autumn of the same year, Kjeldsen tried to sell his two remaining mummies, both female priestesses of Amun, and their coffins to the Museum of Aarhus (Aarhus Museum), but without success. Instead, they were impounded and auctioned off by the town magistrate in 1912, because Kjeldsen owed money to a patent office inCopenhagen. This is the last reference to the two mummies in the newspapers, until one of them cropped up out of the blue in Aarhus.
 In 1950 the newspapers reported that an industrialist, Ivan Lystager (1904‑1985), had donated an Egyptian mummy and coffin to the newly founded Museum of Ancient Art in Aarhus. The name, Taubasti, and titles, ‘Lady of the House’ and ‘Chantress of Amun’, inscribed on the coffin (inv. O 303) leave no room for doubt that it and the accompanying mummy once belonged to Kjeldsen. A letter in the archives of the museum informs us that Lystager had bought them in an antiquities shop in Copenhagen in 1939.
 The fate of Kjeldsen’s last mummy and coffin and their current whereabouts are still unknown. From the newspapers it can be deduced that the coffin stems from the same period (the 21st Dynasty) and was made for a woman, who also bore the titles ‘Lady of the House’ and ‘Chantress of Amun’, and probably answered to the name of Tamit.
 Because of onomastics and the fact that the three coffins all derive from the same period and were made for members of clergy of Amun in Thebes, it is likely that Mohammed Abd er-Rasul found the three mummies interred together in an unknown family tomb in Deir el-Bahari in 1910. The article is therefore supplemented with an appendix, which provides a catalogue of the names and titles inscribed in hieroglyphs on the two coffins in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the Museum of Ancient Art. Hopefully, it can assist researchers in the search for the now lost coffin and mummy (and potentially other grave goods from the same tomb) in state and private ancient Egyptian collections around the world.

The origins, development, and legacy of Elgar’s Memorial Chimes (1923)

Elgar’s Memorial Chimes (1923) has become canonical in carillon repertoire as an early idiomatic work by a composer prominent within the broader musical community. Despite this, the origins of the work are poorly understood. This article explores the development and legacy of this important musical work for carillon, particularly the essential role of the English campanologist William Wooding Starmer in its inception and musical characteristics that make the work particularly effective when executed on the carillon. A final section outlines the surprising journeys and current whereabouts of various manuscripts of the work.

Collecting in the South Sea: The voyage of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux, 1791–1794.Tiki: Marquesan art and the Krusenstern expeditionResonant Histories: Pacific artefacts and the voyages of HMS Royalist, 1890–1893

Ever since the 1760s, European visitors to the South Seas have acquired objects made by Pacific Islanders and taken them away. With motives ranging from philosophical curiosity to avarice, explorers, naval officers, traders, whalers, missionaries, colonial officials, anthropologists, archaeologists, collectors and tourists have traded for, received as gifts, purchased, looted and confiscated objects, removing them from their original contexts of production and use, reclassified them as ‘curiosities’, ‘trifles’, ‘idols’, ‘artefacts’, ‘specimens’ and ‘souvenirs’, and put them up for sale, gifted them to institutions and retained them as family heirlooms. Over time, of course, many of these collected objects have ended up in museums, especially in Europe, which is why we know about them – or, at least, some of them. The practice of cataloguing and writing about collections of Pacific art and artefacts began as soon as the first collections were brought to Europe, but the modern, systematic study of the history of Pacific collections can be said to have begun with the publication in 1978 of Adrienne L. Kaeppler’s ‘Artificial Curiosities’: An exposition of native manufactures collected on the three Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook, R.N. (Honolulu, 1978). This was both a catalogue of a special exhibition, held at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, and a groundbreaking study of the fate and current whereabouts of the objects collected on the three famous Pacific voyages commanded by James Cook in the eighteenth century, providing researchers with a wealth of information and questions to be followed up, and demonstrating the crucial importance of the careful assessment of documentary evidence to the study of historic collections. ‘Artificial Curiosities’ demonstrated what could be done to trace the history of collections and individual objects and how scholars should go about doing it.

A statue inscription of Samsuiluna from the papers of W. G. Lambert

Parmi les documents de feu l’assyriologue W. G. Lambert, on a trouvé des photographies et une édition préliminaire d’une inscription gravée sur une statue mutilée de Samsuiluna, roi de Babylone (1750-1712 av. J.-C.), qui a probablement été pillée en Irak au début des années 1990 dans le contexte de l’aggravation de la situation sécuritaire résultant de la première guerre du Golfe et du régime des sanctions internationales. La connaissance de cet objet et de son emplacement actuel ne repose sur guère plus que des rumeurs. Le présent article offre une édition provisoire de l’inscription basée sur les documents de Lambert, ainsi que d’autres sources qui ont été fournies par des collègues après enquêtes dans le cours de la recherche. Le texte fournit de nouvelles données pour l’histoire des révoltes contre Samsuiluna dans le sud de l’Irak, indiquant que les rébellions ont eu une extension plus étendue au nord et à l’est et ont peut-être duré plus longtemps que les sources disponibles ne le laissaient entendre jusqu’à présent. On peut également espérer que cette publication préliminaire contribuera à modifier le sort de cet objet, afin qu’il puisse être disponible pour une étude plus fiable que ce qui peut être fait sur la base de photos, après rapatriement dans son pays d’origine, l’Irak.

Adolescent offenders' current whereabouts predict locations of their future crimes.

Knowing where crime is likely to happen can help prevent it. Here I investigate whether two basic mechanisms of human mobility—preferential return and spatial exploration—explain and predict where offenders commit future crimes. A sample of 843 adolescents reported their hourly whereabouts during four days. In line with findings from other sources and populations, their locations were concentrated and predictable. During the subsequent four years, 70 of the 843 were apprehended for committing one or more crimes. Compared to others, these 70 future offenders had visited slightly more different locations. However, their action radius and the predictability of their whereabouts had been very similar to those who would not become offenders. The offenders perpetrated most of their crimes around places they had visited before, including places where they previously offended. These findings show that the predictability of human mobility applies to offending and to offenders as well, and helps us understand and forecast where they will commit future crimes. They may prove particularly useful in criminal investigations, as they suggest that police should generally prioritize suspects who are familiar with the location of the crime and its environs, either because of their legal routine activities or because of their prior offences.

The Ancient Near East

The Ancient Near East Christopher T. Begg and Joseph E. Jensen 1658. Abdalla Abdel-Raziq, "An Ointment Tablet from Deir el-Gebrawi," Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 143 (2016) 129-50. A.-R.'s article publishes an ointment tablet dating to the end of 6th Dynasty or later that is currently housed in the "magazine" at Shutb, located near the city of Assiut, Egypt. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 1659. [Nineveh Inscriptions] Ali Y. Al-Juboori, "Recently Discovered Neo-Assyrian Royal Garden Inscriptions from the Review Palace and Nergal Gate of Nineveh," Iraq 79 (2017) 3-20. Between 1987 and 1992, Iraqi archaeologists working under the direction of the local Inspectorate of Antiquities undertook excavations at Nineveh. In particular, they excavated east of the mosque located on the smaller mound of Nebi Yunus and at the Nergal Gate, the middle gate of the northern city wall. At the Nergal Gate, an inscription of Sennacherib was [End Page 553] found on two bull colossi and two paving stones. At Nebi Yunus, the excavators discovered a few inscribed clay and stone objects in the ruins of the armory, the so-called "Rear Palace" (or "Review Palace"). These finds included a slab of Ashurnasirpal II, a prism fragment of Esarhaddon, two human-headed winged bull colossi of the same king, a winged bull of Ashurbanipal, and an unsculpted wall slab of this monarch. Subsequently, after the liberation of Mosul from ISIS/Daʾesh occupation in early 2017, seven further inscriptions of Esarhaddon were discovered in looters' tunnels under the destroyed mosque. All of these inscriptions are edited here. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 1660. [Ashurnasirpal II Inscription, Nimrud] Ali Yaseen Al-Juboori, "An Inscription of Ashurnasirpal II from the Ištar-Šarrat-Niphi Temple at Nimrud," Iraq 80 (2018) 3-13. An inscription of Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883–859 b.c.) was found in the temple of Ištar-Šarrat-niphi at Kalku (Nimrud) in 2015, during the excavations of the Nineveh inspectorate expedition (State Board of Antiquities and Heritage). The preserved text of the inscription—whose current whereabouts are unknown—duplicates RIMA 2 A.0.101.1 i 18-117. This article presents a transliteration of the text, a table of variants, and a translation into Arabic. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 1661. [Drehem] Nawala Al-Mutawalli and Walther Sallaberger (with a contribution by Ali Ubeid Shalkham), "The Cuneiform Documents from the Iraqi Excavations at Drehem," Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 107 (2017) 151-217. Drehem, ancient Duzris-Dagan, is well known as the place where more than 15,000 cuneiform tablets from the Ur III period were found and sold on the antiquities market from 1909 onward. In 2007, the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq undertook the first controlled excavations at the site under the direction of Ali Ubeid Shalkham. The cuneiform texts and fragments found during these excavations not only add to the corpus of already well-known royal archives from the site dealing with cattle, treasure, and shoes, but also provide many records of crafts and agriculture. On the basis of this evidence, we now have a clearer idea of the subsistence economy at the important administrative center and royal palace at Puzriz-Dagan during the Third Dynasty of Ur. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 1662. Vitali Bartash, "Sumerian 'Child,'" JCS 70 (2018) 3-25. B. studies Sumerian terms for minors (dumu, di4 di4-la(2) and lu2 tur-ra) in texts of various genres in order to define their precise meaning and relationship to kinship and age-gradation terminologies. The word dumu ("son/daughter, own's own child, offspring") designates kinship regardless of age. In contrast di4-di4-la(2) ("children") implies age. The terms however often exchange their semantic domains. Another age-related term lu2 tur-ra ("minor") has a social connotation denoting those under patriarchal or professional authority, including children, youths, and the young unmarried, or even recently married individuals as well as junior...

An overview of Murray’s Hodgson indirect contribution to the acoustical community as a mentor

During his more than 20 years of career as a professor at University of British Columbia, Murray Hodgson has inspired many of his previous students to pursue their career in various fields of acoustics, both in academia and industry. His undergraduate engineering course Acoustics and Noise Control was the first exposure to the vast world of acoustics for many of his former students. Furthermore, Murray has also supervised many students through their graduate studies. This paper will highlight Murray’s indirect contribution as a mentor by summarizing the current whereabouts of his former students who are now an active member of the acoustical community in North America and around the world.

Rare red eggs of the Common Guillemot (Uria aalge): birds, biology and people at Bempton, Yorkshire, in the early 1900s

Huge numbers of Common Guillemot (Uria aalge) eggs were harvested by local men known as “climmers” (climbers) at Bempton Cliffs, Flamborough, Yorkshire, until 1954 when egg collecting became illegal. Guillemot eggs are more variable in colour and pattern than those of any other bird. Egg collectors (oologists) particularly favoured sets of unusually coloured eggs laid by the same bird. Red guillemots eggs were extremely rare and eagerly sought. An example of one such egg known as the “Bempton Belle” was found in the collection of J. W. Goodall (active between about 1896 and 1909), and was celebrated in a poem. What was probably another red egg, known as the “Metland Egg”, was collected each year at Bempton between 1912 and 1938. The current whereabouts of the Metland eggs is unknown. We estimate that females laying red eggs occur less than once in a thousand (or ten thousand). We also speculate about the factors responsible for red eggs and why such eggs are so rare.

BVPSMS: A Batch Verification Protocol for End-to-End Secure SMS for Mobile Users

Short Message Service ( SMS ) is a widely used communication medium for mobile applications, such as banking, social networking, and e-commerce. Applications of SMS services also include real-time broadcasting messages, such as notification of natural disasters (e.g., bushfires and hurricane) and terrorist attacks, and sharing the current whereabouts to other users, such as notifying urgent business meeting information, transmitting quick information in the battlefield to multiple users, notifying current location to our friends and sharing market information. However, traditional SMS is not designed with security in mind (e.g., messages are not securely sent). It is also possible to extract international mobile subscriber identity of the mobile user. In the literature, there is no known protocol that could enable secure transmission of SMS from one user to multiple users simultaneously. In this paper, we introduce a batch verification authentication and key agreement protocol, BVPSMS , which provides end-to-end message security over an insecure communication channel between different mobile subscribers. Specifically, the proposed protocol securely transmits SMS from one mobile user to many other users simultaneously. The reliability of the protocol is discussed along with an algorithm to detect malicious user requests in a batch. We then evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol in terms of communication and computation overheads, protocol execution time, and batch and re-batch verification times. The impacts of the user mobility, and the time, space and cost complexity analysis are also discussed. We then present a formal security proof of the proposed protocol. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first provably-secure batch verification protocol that delivers end-to-end SMS security using symmetric keys.

Moyshe Levin (Ber Sarin) of Yung-Vilne and His Solo Publishing Venture for Children

Moshe [Moyshe] Levin, talented author and artist, was better known by his pseudonym Ber Sarin, the pen name he used when he wrote short Yiddish books in rhyme for children who were just beginning to read. He wrote the lively texts, illustrated them in color and black and white, and self-published many of them in Vilnius (Vilna) Lithuania in the 1930s. The books were popular and successful with teachers and children. He was a graduate of the Vladimir Medem Teachers’ Seminary, a teacher in the TSYSHO school system, and a member of Yung-Vilne .2017 is the 75th anniversary of Levin’s murder at the hands of the Nazis. Levin left behind a wife and daughter who also perished during the Holocaust. Levin’s literary legacy, the books themselves, survived in limited numbers in only a handful of libraries; some are now available on the web. This article includes a brief biography of Moshe ]Moyshe] Levin (Ber Sarin), an overview and discussion of his work for children, information on the current whereabouts of his works, and a bibliography with brief annotations of the works the author was able to view.

Internet of Things (IOT) Solution for Increasing the Quality of Life of Physically Challenged People

Visually Impaired (VI) people generally face difficulties during their pedestrian commute, when forced on to side-walks cluttered with vendors, animals and other obstacles. No single system can comprehensively cover all of their mobility needs. The proposed system intends to provide smart electronic aid for the VI which is appropriate to complement their white cane using the principles of the IoT. It detects any low-lying obstacles on its course and alerts the user to them and also uses Global Positioning System (GPS) technology which is a component of any smart phone, to pinpoint the VI's location when necessary. A feedback system, which is essentially a simple auditory circuit, which alarms the user of any obstacle, and informs priory designated guardians about the VI's current whereabouts, done by transmitting the coordinates of VI to a registered mobile number fed into an Android Application.

Where are they? Where will they be? In pursuit of current and future whereabouts of endangered Himalayan musk deer

Conservation and management of environmentally suitable areas, that support survival and persistence of species, are keys to protect wildlife in their natural habitat. Populations of Himalayan musk deer Moschus leucogaster, an endemic species in Asia, are listed as endangered in the IUCN red list, requiring immediate conservation actions before their extinction in the wild. In order to model and map the current and future (under projected climate change settings) climatically-suitable area for the species, Maxent modeling technique, that requires presence-only records, was employed. As predictors, we extracted 19 bioclimatic variables from ‘WorldClim’ database with a ∼1km spatial resolution and used 10 uncorrelated bioclimatic variables as inputs. As indicated by a high area under ROC curve (AUC) value (>0.9), Maxent well performed and predicted climatically-suitable habitat for the species along the Hindukush Himalaya, where the species is known to occur. Annual mean temperature appeared to most influence the distribution of potential habitat for the species. An expansion of species’ habitat was noticed in the Indian and Tibetan part of species range, suggesting a potential future effect of climate change on the species distribution. The findings of this study could assist wildlife managers in devising conservation plans for the current and future conservation of the species in the context of climate change. This is the first study to model and map the current and future distribution of the species in its range.

OREGONSCAPE

BUD DIETLEIN’S Haceta Head on Oregon Coast Highway animated diorama, pictued in the image above, was first displayed at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco (1939–1940). Dietlein, an artist based in Vancouver, Washington, took three months to complete the project. The diorama measures thirteen feet wide and five feet tall and consists of a featured seascape with a foreground, middle ground, and background. It also includes a patented “wave action” mechanism to produce an ocean spray effect using a series of rollers and cut out celluloid. The diorama was an instant success — with some noting at the time that it was the best part of the large Oregon exhibit. During the years after the Expo, Dietlein continued to work on the diorama ­ — including adding the sound of crashing waves — and in 1947 it premiered in the Northwest at his Vancouver art studio. OREGONSCAPE Fifteen hundred people lined up to see the contraption on the opening day. The Oregonian reported on March 6 that Eleanor Roosevelt, in town to attend the Pacific Northwest College conference at Reed College, also made time to visit. According to a March 2, 1947, Oregonian article, Dietlein travelled east in April to exhibit the diorama, although no specific itinerary was noted. Dietlein unfortunately passed away unexpectedly in 1964, and the current whereabouts of the diorama are not known. The Oregon Historical Society would love to know if readers have any information on the diorama’s whereabouts. If so, please let us know so we can work to get it up and running, possibly for the first time, here in Oregon. — Matthew Cowan, OHS Moving Images and Photography Archivist ...

OREGONSCAPE

BUD DIETLEIN’S Haceta Head on Oregon Coast Highway animated diorama, pictued in the image above, was first displayed at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco (1939–1940). Dietlein, an artist based in Vancouver, Washington, took three months to complete the project. The diorama measures thirteen feet wide and five feet tall and consists of a featured seascape with a foreground, middle ground, and background. It also includes a patented “wave action” mechanism to produce an ocean spray effect using a series of rollers and cut out celluloid. The diorama was an instant success — with some noting at the time that it was the best part of the large Oregon exhibit. During the years after the Expo, Dietlein continued to work on the diorama ­ — including adding the sound of crashing waves — and in 1947 it premiered in the Northwest at his Vancouver art studio. OREGONSCAPE Fifteen hundred people lined up to see the contraption on the opening day. The Oregonian reported on March 6 that Eleanor Roosevelt, in town to attend the Pacific Northwest College conference at Reed College, also made time to visit. According to a March 2, 1947, Oregonian article, Dietlein travelled east in April to exhibit the diorama, although no specific itinerary was noted. Dietlein unfortunately passed away unexpectedly in 1964, and the current whereabouts of the diorama are not known. The Oregon Historical Society would love to know if readers have any information on the diorama’s whereabouts. If so, please let us know so we can work to get it up and running, possibly for the first time, here in Oregon. — Matthew Cowan, OHS Moving Images and Photography Archivist ...

Philip Brookes Mason (1842–1903): surgeon, general practitioner and naturalist

Philip Brookes Mason (1842–1903) of Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, was a medical doctor, a keen naturalist and collector. He first devoted himself to the study of botany, later Lepidoptera, then conchology and finally Coleoptera. His private collections, however, were of a wider nature accumulated both from his own gatherings and from purchases. He was an important figure in the Burton-on-Trent Natural History and Archaeological Society and in national societies including the Entomological Society of London and the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He campaigned for a museum in Burton-on-Trent and his medical and altruistic achievements are also noteworthy. The current whereabouts of his collections are given in an appendix.

Correspondence of Franz Liszt and the Comtesse Marie d’Agoult ed. by Michael Short (review)

Correspondence of Franz Liszt and the Comtesse Marie d'Agoult. Introduced, translated, annotated, and edited by Michael Short, and based on the critical prepared by Serge Gut and Jacqueline Bellas. (Franz Liszt Study Series, no. 14.) Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2013. [x, 448 p. ISBN 9781576471654. $76.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. While it may not quite have been the affair that held everybody shocked, spellbound and continually seeking further vicarious excitement (p. vii) in the nineteenth century, as Michael Short characterizes it, the topsy-turvy relationship between Franz Liszt and the (married) Countess Marie d'Agoult from about 1833 through the mid-1840s ranks as a--perhaps the--foundational component of Liszt's early career as musician, artist, thinker, and overall romantic figure. While many details of that relationship have been inevitably lost to time, it still vigorously survives thanks to a huge volume of extant correspondence that has been available to the general reader since the early 1930s, when Daniel Ollivier released two volumes of letters exchanged between his celebrated grandparents. The scholarly value of these letters was enhanced significantly in 2001, when the French musicologists Serge Gut and Jacqueline Bellas released a critical of the correspondence (Franz Liszt and Marie d'Agoult, Correspondance, eds. Serge Gut and Jacqueline Bellas [Paris: Fayard, 2001]) that augmented Ollivier's collection, corrected numerous errors in his edition, and drew on seventy years of scholarship surrounding Liszt, d'Agoult, and their variegated world. Consequently, the Gut/Bellas has become the definitive document on the couple, as well as an indispensable source for students of Liszt's early and virtuoso years. Michael Short's of the Liszt/d'Agoult correspondence brings these letters to English readers for the first time. This material is not easy to read, even in the original French, as it includes numerous asides, insider and oblique references, and original-language citations--often quoted incorrectly--in English, Italian, and German. Yet, as translator, Short is more than up to the challenge: he has already edited and translated a large collection of Liszt's letters (Franz Liszt, Liszt Letters in the Library of Congress, ed. and trans. Michael Short [Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2002]); and for the Liszt/d'Agoult correspondence, he was able to work closely with Gut while preparing his English readings. While Short's is, as its title page indicates, Abridged from and based on the critical edition of Gut and Bellas, the organization of his follows that of its source only to a point. The French features an extended, multi-sectioned introduction authored by Gut, the complete correspondence chronologically arranged and grouped into fourteen chapters, eight contextual documents, and several indexes. Each chapter is preceded by a biographical summary and a detailed chronological overview of Liszt's and d'Agoult's activities during the period. Each letter is then treated as a stand-alone document, with reference given at the end of the letter's text to any earlier in which it might have appeared, its current whereabouts (if applicable), and commentary via footnotes that restart with the next letter. Short, on the other hand, provides only a brief overview of the couple's life together in a succinct, new preface (pp. vii-ix) before launching into the letters. Names, compositions, and other authored products follow in a single index. Short partially dispenses with the chapter divisions in Gut/Bellas, in that he omits chapter numbers, introductions, and chronologies, but compensates by continuously numbering footnotes until a chapter in Gut/Bellas ends. For example, the footnotes in letters 45-85 of Short's run to 220 before resetting with the next letter, and these forty-one letters correspond to Gut's and Bellas's second chapter, which covers the period from May 1834 to June 1835--a period notable for the heavy influence of the Abbe Felicite de Lamennais on Liszt, the young composer's earliest published essays, and the experimental piano pieces like the single-movement Harmonies poetiques et The differences in organizational strategies perhaps would not have been as apparent and jarring had Short produced a complete translation of the critical edition. …