a light in the dark

Coming out of the Lamb and Flag this Sunday, I thought St. Giles looked rather pretty, so in lieu of xmas cards which I have given up many years ago, here's my festive offering with best wishes to all:

own photo

in vino veritas

If you've ever drunkenly looked at the label on a wine bottle and wondered why it doesn't list the ingredients, you'll find the sober answer in the first half of this book:

Understanding wine chemistry
Andrew Waterhouse, Gavin Sacks, David Jeffery
Wiley 2024

which systematically discusses all the molecules you may find in the bottle, from H2O and ethanol to the more complex ones. And then their reactions. The second half is about how wine is made, so essentially first part is chemistry for winemakers (and -lovers) and the second is winemaking for chemists.

All in all 560 pages, but for a more concise coverage read all about it in my latest essay review:

Wine science

Chemistry & Industry Volume 88, Issue 12, December 2024, Page 35

access via:

Wiley Online Library (paywalled PDF of the whole review section)

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I'm happy to send a PDF on request.

another twin city

It amuses me that my ancestral Y chromosomes passed through two cities that are now twinned with Oxford. My granddad studied at Bonn and met my grandmother there, and his grandfather Richard the railways clerk was born and bred in Breslau (now Wroclaw), as was his father. The minimal dates are 1830-1877, but the data peters out on the far side, so the actual stay may have been longer.

Breslau had a turbulent early history which included total destruction by the Mongols in 1241. It became part of Prussia in 1741. When various educational institutions merged to form a university in 1811, it was the first university that had faculties for both catholic and protestant theology. In 1815, Breslau became the capital of the Province Silesia.

It grew rapidly in the Industrial Revolution and in 1842 it became only the 5th major city (with more than 100,000 residents) in the Deutscher Bund, after Vienna, Berlin, Prague and Hamburg. In 1875 it was the third biggest city in the German Empire (after Berlin and Hamburg).

Couldn't quite find a postcard to match the time range when my ancestors lived in Breslau, but this one is at least from the correct century.

What happened:

1830 Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Groß was born in Breslau. There are no dates and documents before that and conflicting information on the name and profession of his father, so it's quite possible that some of his ancestry was present at Breslau well before that date, but we don't know. There is an address though: At the time of his baptism (4.4.1830), the family lived at Büttnerstrasse 23 in Breslau.

1852 Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Groß married Anna Rosina Faudner from Chursangwitz (Kr. Ohlau) in Breslau on June 1. The marriage must have been a little bit overdue, as only three months and a week later, their son Johann Friedrich Richard Groß was born in Breslau.

1866 Richard's confirmation in Breslau.

1874 Richard was spared military service due to crossed legs and height - not sure if he was too tall or too short but looking at his descendants as well as the literal meaning of our name being tall, I don't think he can have been too short.

Between 1877 - 1879 he married twice-widowed Maria Louise Mentzel, presumably between the birth of her son from her second marriage, in 1877, and the birth of their daughter. Although she wasn't born in the city, her previous marriage to shepherd Johann Gottlieb Reim was also in Breslau, and her son from that marriage was born there.

1880 By the time their first daughter arrived, the family had left the city and moved to Königswalde (Neurode). Their further moves are written out in this entry.

Independently of all of this, here's my great-aunt-in-law at Breslau in the 1930s, scroll down to see one photo of her with a recognisable cityscape and then the matching postcard.

Locations:

• Büttnerstrasse 23

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929-1934
13. Lorsch 1890-1938/1973
14. Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current
15. Gütersloh 1825-1928/1950s

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim, Hamborn and Krefeld.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

let's celebrate trees

My last feature of the year is a seasonal offering with the radical suggestion that we should celebrate old trees growing in their natural environment, rather than murder millions of conifers for our festivities.

Happy holidays to all whatever you're celebrating.

Reasons to worship ancient trees

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 24, 16 December 2024, Pages R1203-R1205

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my Mastodon thread where I highlighted all this year's CB features.

Last year's thread is here .

Many millions of Christmas trees are grown in plantations for seasonal consumption. (Photo: Jeanne Menjoulet/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)

one plague to the next

Some thoughts on

Violeta
by Isabel Allende
Plaza & Janes 2022

In recent years I haven't quite managed to keep up with Isabel Allende's publishing speed (here's the last one I read), but picked this one because I thought I remembered her saying in an interview that it was based on the life of her mother, who was then in her 90s. Turns out that it isn't quite, but the 100-year timeframe may have been inspired by it. The fictional Violeta was born in 1920 during the flu pandemic and died in 2020 during the covid pandemic, so this is a very neatly defined life span from plague to plague. Even though it's not a real memoir, it is written like one, so I'll also tag it as such, to go in my memoir inspiration file.

Other than not being the biography of her mother, this is very satisfying for aficionados of the Allende universe, as we get elements of her family history and her early novels remixed and extrapolated into the 21st century. Criminal involvement of the CIA looms over people's lives as you would expect. Reviewers tend to emphasise that her novels are set in an un-named South American country, but here as in many of her previous books Chile is so clearly recognisable that no other interpretation is possible.

A bit more unexpected to me were the multiple links to European countries including Germany and Norway. With both Germany and Chile moving into and out of brutal dictatorships within the 20th century, it is kind of logical that there has been traffic of refugees in both directions, and some families have even moved back and forth. This connection between Germany and Latin America is also featured in a film from 2012, El amigo aleman (my German friend, by Argentinian-German director Jeanine Meerapfel), but other than that I haven't seen all that much coverage of it.

Naturally, with a focus on female character and the 100 year time span, progress in women's rights is a thread, but not waved around too much.

Overall a big and bold sweep of a female centred and unconventional family saga that may come to be seen as one of her major achievements.

I do like the cover designs they are now using for her novels. At one point, when El cuaderno de Maya came out, I hated the cover so much I couldn't bring myself to buying the book.

PS have now created a tag for libros en español - also, as promised in 2020, I will create a new book review master post at the end of the year.

a village becomes a city

I have covered Gütersloh as the home of one of my four railway families, but looking at it again for the lost cities series, I realised that beyond that railway family, some lineages are actually indigenous to the villages that now form the inner city of Gütersloh as far back as records last (ca 1620), ie long before before the village became a town in 1825.

Gütersloh grew rapidly in the 19th century, mainly thanks to its key position on the Cologne to Minden railway line now served by the RE6 (it is thus one of the six lost cities to which I can take a direct regional express train from Düsseldorf-Bilk where I'm based when I'm in Germany). The station opened in 1847. Businesses including Bertelsmann (publishing) and Miele (domestic appliances) chose the quiet but well-connected town for their operations. Nevertheless, in the absence of heavy industries, it didn't grow as big as the cities in the western parts of today's NRW. It only reached the 100,000 threshold in 2018, officially becoming a Großstadt, making it the third major city in the Ostwestfalen region (after Bielefeld and Paderborn).

Not many postcards of the town around, but you can see the village heritage on this one (and I already shared one with the railway station here).
Source.

What happened: Direct ancestors with family names like Cosfeld (Kosfeld, Coesfeld), Güthenke or Goldbecker were resident in the village of Gütersloh in the 17th century. I am particularly excited about the name Güthenke as it looks like it might be linked to the origins of the village name, so that is like an ultimate root for a name line. The earliest in that line, Hinrich Güthenke was born before 1620 at Blankenhagen 33, Gütersloh (Blankenhagen being a village that merged into the town in 1910).

Around the time when the village became a town, Christoph Heinrich Cosfeld (* ca. 1801 Gütersloh) married Clara Dorothea Güthenke (* ca. 1803 Gütersloh).

On 12.11.1851 their son Friedrich Wilhelm Cosfeld, who worked as a cooper in Gütersloh married Catherine Elisabeth Obelode from Steinhagen. Her family name is a one-off linked to farm called Ubbelohde near Bielefeld, and her ancestry is very well documented. There is a wild story suggesting she may have a French refugee in her family tree.

Their daughter Johanna Catherina Charlotte Cosfeld married the railway worker Johann Anton Lütkemeyer from Schwaney, who died in 1887 aged only 44, of tuberculosis. Charlotte married again, but she was still resident at Gütersloh at the marriage of her daughter Luise Lütkemeyer in 1902, so I'm assuming she stayed there until her death in 1928. One of Luise's sisters also stayed in Gütersloh, so we still had relatives there as late as the 1950s, but I don't know what became of them. My mother recalled a cousin of her mother called Clara Gold who ran a small shop there in the 50s, that is all I know.

So our official dates are now: 1825-1928/1950s.

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929-1934
13. Lorsch 1890-1938/1973
14. Krefeld 1764 - 1924/present

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim and Hamborn.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

trios reshuffled

After the reshuffled quartets list, here's a fresh version of the trios as well

Trios without a viola part:

Anonymus (Venice, around 1700): Due sonate a due flauti e basso (in F and C)

Bach: Trio sonata in C minor from the Musical Offering.

Bach: Allegretto and Andante from the 3-part inventions for soprano, alto and tenor recorder

Bach: concerto in d minor for oboe, violin and cello. adapted from the concerto for two harpsicords BWV1060

Bach: Little Bach suite No. 2 for woodwind or string or mixed trio - includes Bb clarinet option.

CPE Bach: Trio in Bb major for flute, violin, cello.

WF Bach: Two fughettas for soprano, alto and tenor recorder (all parts in treble clef)

Corelli: 2 Chamber sonatas for two violins & BC: op 2 No. 4 in E minor, op 4 No. 9 in Bb major.

Haydn: Four London trios for two flutes or violins and cello Hob IV
Very accessible to amateur players and extremely lovely, these are from Haydn's second visit to London in 1794 and may have served as a sandpit where he tried out ideas for his later symphonic works. I discovered the Edition Peters set of trios 1-3 at Oxfam exactly when I needed it for our plague-time bandstand adventures, and we played them on several occasions.

YouTube recordings (see also my new playlist):

London Trio No. 1
London Trio No. 2
London Trio No. 3
London Trio No. 4

Haydn, Trio No. 4 in F for flute or recorder, violin, cello or piano, op 11 No. 4 (Schott). First published by Hummel in 1770, this is presumably an adaptation of one of the 128 baryton trios, but it’s not No. 4.

Gottfried Keller (died 1704) Trio sonata in Bb for treble recorder/violin, oboe/violin, basso continuo

Haydn: Trio in G major for alto, tenor and bass recorder (all parts in treble clef)

Jean-Marie Leclair l'aine: Two trio sonatas for two violins and bc, op 13, no. 1 and 2

JB Loeillet, sonata No. 1 G major for two violins & piano

JB Loeillet, Trio sonata in C minor (op. II/6) Parts are marked: alto recorder/flute; oboe/violin; b.c./cello/bassoon/viola da gamba.

Mozart: serenade in C for two violins and cello "Ganz kleine Nachtmusik" KV 648. This is the piece that was rediscovered in 2024 youtube premiere here. We played it a couple of months later, very exciting to play a new Mozart piece. Presumed to be an early teenage work, it appears to prefigure the famous serenade "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" K525 in some elements. Score and parts are available to download for free from ISMLP.

Quantz: Trio sonata in G, K46, for oboe, bassoon or cello, and bc.

JM Sperger (1750-1812), terzetto primo a flauto, violino e violoncello

Carl Stamitz, six trios for two violins and violoncello, op 16

Various composers: Chamber Music for beginners, Editio Musica Budapest. Very easy trios with melody parts available for violin or flute/oboe or Bb clarinet, bass part for cello or bassoon.

Trios with a viola part:

Jean Barriere: Trio sonata in d minor for viola, cello and bc (also has a cello version of the viola part).

Beethoven: Serenade for violin viola cello op. 8 We played parts of this in October, lovely stuff. A youtube performance is here.

Beethoven: Serenade for flute violin viola op. 25

Haydn: Four London trios for two flutes or violins and cello Hob IV
After the version described above I also found a different edition including all four trios from Southern Music that also includes parts for Bb clarinet, viola and bassoon. I think we once tried combining both sets and it didn't work. Arrangers must have changed more than just the instrumentation.

Haydn: Trio for violin, viola, cello in Eb, Hoboken V Es1

Telemann: Concerto a tre in F, for recorder, horn or viola and bc or bassoon or cello.

Various composers: Chamber Music II, Editio Musica Budapest. Very easy trios with parts for violin/flute/oboe, viola or Bb clarinet, cello or bassoon.

Two recent acquisitions in the category trios with a viola part.

Update 20.12.2024, added the Mozart trio which we played this week. Funnily enough, there wasn't a single Mozart piece in the trio collection before.

quartets reshuffled

My list of the quartets in my growing chamber music collection is becoming unwieldy, and I also need to split it into those that have a viola part and those that don't - because when we (random subsets of Cowley Orchestra) meet up in the holidays to try some chamber music, we may or may not have a viola (and the viola parts are written in a different clef that most others can't read).

So first up the list of quartets (and one quintet) that have a viola part (in some cases there are also alternative parts offered, such as 3rd violin), I'll note specifically what the alternatives are in each case:

Bach: 14 fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier arranged for string quartet by R. Hofmann. Part 2 (No. 8-14)
Beethoven: quartet op.18, No. 1 in F (lovely performance by GoYa quartet here)
Beethoven: quartet op.18, No. 3 in D
Boccherini: 9 string quartets (various opus numbers).
Borodin: string quartet No. 2 in D
Dvorak: string quartet in a minor, op 16
Dvorak: string quartet in Eb major, op 51
Dvorak: string quartet No. 12 in F major (American quartet)
Haydn: Quintenquartett Op 76, Nr. 2, in D minor
Haydn: Quartet in d minor Op 103, his last quartet, which remained unfinished, there are only two movements, of which the first is performed here.
Haydn: 30 famous quartets, Edition Peters 289a, 289b
Mozart: string quartets I, Edition Peters 16 – contains 10 famous quartets
Mozart: string quartets II, Edition Peters 17 – contains 17 quartets including two flute quartets, the oboe quartet, and K525 Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
Mozart (arr. John Auton): Three pieces for strings (choice of violin 3 / viola)
Mozart: quartet in B flat, K485, played by Carmel Quartet here
Mozart: Adagio for cor anglais (oboe/viola), 2 violins and cello, K580a. Another unfinished work, a lovely performance is here;
Pachelbel: Canon in D, arranged for string quartet by Donald Fraser
F. X. Richter (1709-1789): String quartet in B flat Op 5 No. 2, audio here
Schubert: Excerpts from 5th symphony, strings pack
Schubert: Quartet for flute, guitar, viola and cello (YouTube). Found this in an edition published 1956 - it later turned out that Schubert had just arranged a trio by Czech guitarist Vaclav Matiegka (1773-1830) and added the cello to give it a bit more oomph. The original trio (Notturno op 21) is lovely, actually, but doesn't harm to have the cello part too.
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 1 Op 49.
Pyarelal Sharma: Indian Summer. enchanting pieces for string quartet. Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 1 Op 49.
Francesco Veracini: Chamber sonata for violin and strings Gm. (so that's solo violin plus string quartet). We've played most of this and it is really lovely. Can't find a recording with this instrumentation online, only violin plus piano/cello accompaniment.
Various composers: The String quartet: Original string quartet movements of simple character by old masters; Walter Höckner, ed.

List of quartets and quintets that don't have a viola part. Many of these have a clarinet part in Bb, some also a horn part in F:

Anonymus: 2 Hoftänze from the Hessen Books for 5 instruments. All parts in C; 1 in bass clef others in treble.
Anonymus: My Loves an Arbutus arr. for woodwind quartet by A.L. Wyver
Malcolm Arnold: Three shanties for wind quintet
Bach: Bourree from the 3rd cello suite arranged by Gordon Lewin for Flute oboe clarinet bassoon.
Gordon Jacob: Four old tunes for flute, oboe, clarinet & bassoon.
Darius Milhaud: La cheminée du roi René, suite for woodwind quintet (incl. French horn in F ) - see a lovely performance with costumes here.
Mozart: Divertimento Nr 9 in B K240 arranged for wind quintet by Günther Weigelt
Mozart: Divertimento Nr 12 in Eb K252 arranged for wind quintet by Werner Rottler
Mozart: Divertimento Nr 13 in F K253 arranged for wind quintet by Günther Weigelt
JC Schickhardt, sonata in F major op 22 no. 1 for 2 treble recorders (flutes) oboe and basso continuo

The three Mozart quintets I recently found at an Oxfam shop - loving the covers, even though I wouldn't count Mozart as Alte Musik (early music).

PS List of trios is here.

Updated 19.12.

silk town through the centuries

I have written about the Krefeld clan on various occasions, but somehow didn't have a piece on Krefeld in the first series of #lostcities. The direct ancestors of my great-grandfather Julius Düsselmann are recorded there from 1764 to 1924. Descendants of Julius's cousins still live there to this day, so it's about time for an entry, which will lead us deeper into the past than anything in the first season.

Under William of Orange, Krefeld had a record of welcoming religious minorities that were persecuted elsewhere, including Mennonites and Quakers. One Mennonite family, the Von der Leyens, transformed the history of the town by running an extremely successful and lucrative silk weaving industry, for which they were awarded a monopoly by the king of Prussia in 1763. At that point, Krefeld had only 4756 residents. With the silk boom the town grew explosively and became relatively wealthy, even though it also had its share of social conflict including a weavers revolt in 1828. In 1888 it passed the 100,000 mark making it officially a city. Politically, the town had fallen to Prussia in 1702, became part of France from 1801 until 1814 (Arrondissement de Crévelt), and fell back to Prussia after Napoleon's defeat. On the 200th anniversary of Krefeld joining Prussia the first time, emperor Wilhelm II visited the city and promised to station a cavalry regiment there, which he delivered in person, four years later. More about this mildly amusing episode here. The K in today's spelling of the name only became official in 1925.

Rheinstrasse cuts across the rectangle defined by the four former city walls, so it's easy to find and I vaguely remember how it looks now. I'm assuming the view here is from the top of the St Dionysius church.
Source.

What happened - just to sketch the broad outlines (essentially everybody named here was born and died in Krefeld unless specified otherwise):

1764 Christophel Wilsberg from Hamm married Anna Sybille Wolff from Mülheim in Krefeld

1788 Johann Georg Wilhelm Düsselmann from Dortmund married their daughter Margarete Wilsberg in Krefeld (he had previously married Anna Christina Lohr in 1782, also in Krefeld)

1796 Jacob de la Strada from Fachbach married Margarete Giesen (born in Krefeld although her parents married in nearby St. Tönis, today Tönisvorst) in Krefeld

1804 At the birth of their son Wilhelm, Johann Georg Wilhelm Düsselmann and Margarete Wilsberg lived at Auf dem Alten Kirchhoff (see list of locations below). JGW Düsselmann did not sign the certificate as he was unable to write. The certificate is issued in French by the Mairie de Creveld, and dated according to the calendar of the French Revolution, 25. Thermidor XII = 13.8.1804.
At the birth of their daughter Elisabetha, Jacob de la Strada and Margarete Giesen lived "devant la porte de St. Antoine". 26. Frimaire XIII = 17.12.1804

1826 Protestant silk weaver Wilhelm Düsselmann married Catholic Elisabetha de la Strada in Krefeld. They had 13 children and brought up the boys as Protestants and the girls as Catholics. Their descendents are the Krefeld Clan listed here. The survival rates and long lifespans bear witness to the wealth that the booming silk business brought to the ordinary people of Krefeld. Compare and contrast with Wilhelm's grandfather Christophel Wilsberg, who had died from malnutrition in 1781, aged only 52.

1841 At the birth of their son Carl (later written as Karl) and his twin sister Maria (7th and 8th of the 13 children), Wilhelm Düsselmann and Catholic Elisabetha de la Strada lived in the Peters-Strasse, house number 1559 (I'm assuming this is the old numbering system, when one sequence of numbers covered the entire town, as opposed to one sequence for each street)

1883 Julius Düsselmann born as the fourth of six children of Karl and Elisabeth (Karl also had a son from a previous marriage) - sadly no address given on the birth certificate.

1890 The much bigger city gets a professional fire brigade. Its founding director is Karl's brother August Düsselmann, who previously led the volunteer force. As of 1882, at the birth of his adventurous son Walter, he was still a decorator (Anstreicher) in his day job, and lived at Elisabethstrasse 95.

1924 The residence of my direct ancestors in Krefeld presumably ended soon after the death of my great-great-grandmother Elisabeth Catharina Imig who died October 2nd. On her death certificate, her and her husband's address is given as Alte Linnerstrasse 2.

1927 Her husband, Karl Düsselmann survived her by two years and a half, but as he was well over 80 and then died in Neukirchen-Vluyn, where his daughter Alwine lived with her husband Willi Esser, I reckon Karl will have lived with her family for the last two years of his life. He died 11.4.1927 aged 86. The death certificate reports he was resident of Vluyn, without a street address.

Locations:

• Alte Linner Straße 2. The Alte Linner Straße begins at the Ostwall, the Eastern long side of the rectangle, but it is numbered the wrong way round, with the lowest numbers furthest away from the centre, so number 2 is a lot further out than I have ventured so far. On google streetview the house looks like a 1950s redevelopment.
• Auf dem Alten Kirchhof doesn't exist any more as a street name, but the protestant church in the old town is still the Alte Kirche, and the street describing a U-turn on the Western side of the church is called An der alten Kirche, so I guess that's where the address must have been.
• "devant la porte de St. Antoine" it took me a while to realise that this must be the gate to St. Tönis, which was the Western gate of the old town. I don't think the gate survives, but it must have been where today's St. Anton-Straße crosses what was then the Western boundary of the town, the Dionysius-Straße. Just Southeast of that place is the Dionysius church, from which the Rheinstraße projects Eastwards, as seen in the postcard above.
• Elisabethstraße 95 Not far from the Alte Linner Str., above. The house no. 95 appears to have been merged with 97, to create more garage space on the ground floor, with only one entrance for humans, and five for cars.
• Petersstraße. This street is actually a major axis inside the rectangle of the former city walls, the first parallel to the Ostwall. Will have to work out how the house number translates to modern numbering.

In August this year, I visited Krefeld for the second time, got to meet some of my relatives who live there, and had a bit of an architectural trail. See the photos of the places I saw in my flickr album. I need to revisit to look up the street addresses mentioned above.

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929-1934
13. Lorsch 1890-1938/1973.

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim and Hamborn.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

Update 8.12.2024 I've added the list of locations as a new feature which I am planning to introduce across the series (if and when any specific addresses are known at all). If only to make sure that the next time I visit the place I know exactly where to look for the footprints of my ancestors.

aurochs dead and alive

My latest feature in Current Biology is about a big beast of the Pleistocene that has been extinct for almost four centuries, but is also present in the genomes of current livestock: the aurochs. A large scale study of ancient genomes has revealed the population history of the Eurasian species from which today's domestic cattle descends, and based on this wealth of information, the chances are improving to recreate an aurochs-like bovine that could serve the ecosystem services of the defunct species.

Big bovines lost and reborn

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 23, 2 December 2024, Pages R1159-R1161

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Last year's thread is here .

Cave art at Lascaux, shown here, depicts the aurochs among other large mammals present across Europe in the Pleistocene. (Photo: JoJan/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).)

a catholic carolingian town

Lorsch is quite important in my family history but when I prepared the first set of lost cities entries, I struggled to find a suitable postcard, other than the ubiquitous Torhalle from around 900 (so a bit older than my records).

As my great-grandparents ran a bakery in the Bahnhofstrasse (station road), I now looked for postcards of that street specifically and found this one:

source

Not sure if the bakery is in it, and it is a bit hard to check as the building has disappeared, but I will visit and try to find out at some point.

What happened: The old baker, Adam Eberle (born 1863) married his cousin Anna Barbara Schütz in 1890 and set up the bakery at Bahnhofstraße 27 soon after. The town had around 3,800 residents then. He struggled initially and had to rely on agriculture and his relatives in the rural Odenwald region nearby for support. The four children had to help out as well, eg making deliveries. Nevertheless, the bakery ran for several decades, until around 1930. Anna Barbara died in 1934, Adam in 1938. The house remained in the possession of their three daughters until the last of them died in 1973. It was then sold to the city, which ended up demolishing it for road building. So the relevant dates for our series are 1890-1938/1973.

Lorsch, the site of a famous Carolingian abbey from 764, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was a small and very catholic town then, and the family rooted in the protestant hinterland has tended to blame all its difficulties on the hostile environment, but it is hard to check the truth behind that. Today's population is around 14,000. The town now takes pride in the byname "Karolingerstadt" - with no chance of living up to its Carolingian heyday.

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929-1934

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim and Hamborn.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

art to take part in

Some thoughts on
Yoko Ono: Music of the mind
Kunstsammlung NRW: K20
Düsseldorf
(until 16.3.2025)
(in collaboration with the Tate Modern)

I came to this exhibition a bit by accident and without knowing much about Yoko Ono beyond the bits that everybody knows, so it was an interesting learning experience. I found out that much of her work is based on the concept of making the audience create the art, eg by just displaying an object and an instruction what to do with it. Such as lots of white walls to draw or write on. or a blanket to create interesting shapes with. Some of the creations were naturally ephemeral, like the game of chess with two sets of white pieces, to be played until you lose track of which ones are yours (professional chess players probably wouldn't have much of a problem?), whereas the ones drawn on the walls presumably last (and evolve) as long as the exhibition.

The artist compared her work to that of a composer who only creates the score as an instruction, from which musicians then produce the work of art - with potentially different outcomes depending on how much effort and skill goes into the execution, the acoustic of the venue, the support of the audience, etc. I'm guessing that this is also the thought that inspired the title of the exhibition: the artist creates the art in the mind of the participating audience, much like the composer creates it in the mind of performing musicians.

In the last 10 years I have come to realise that (to me at least) trying to play music is much more enlightening and enjoyable than only listening to it, so this participatory approach to art made a lot of sense to me on that level. Even though in the event I didn't leave any permanent traces in the exhibition, as I was too busy watching other people responding to the instructions. In that sense it was a similar experience to the recent Tony Cragg exhibition (Please touch, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf), where the best thing was watching people interact with the sculptures, although the touching as such was fun too.

The room in the photo below, for instance, had lots of white walls to draw on and a white rowing boat in the middle, to leave messages on the theme of migration and refugees, with blue sharpies provided. Thankfully, the people willing to pay for a Yoko Ono exhibition appear to be a very sensible lot, so the quality of the contributions was a lot better than what you might find on other blank spaces. I also loved the multiple trophic layers of interactions: the artist, the participant, the participant's friend taking a photo, then me taking a photo of both:

own photo

More photos on my flickr.

not yet a capital

Back in the first plague winter of 2020-21, I entertained myself with a blog series on the "lost cities" where my recent ancestors used to live - until the 1960s when my parents and grandparents (separately) thought it was a good idea to live in the sticks and embrace a car-dependent lifestyle. The series was born out of research for my musical family history memoir when I realised that Heinrich the cellist and Frieda the pianist each lived in several cities that I quite liked, and never, ever, in the country (while old Heinrich was in the military, his regiment was moved to the small town of Dieuze as a punishment, that was as close as they got).

This focus on Heinrich and Frieda obviously biased my first set of 10 lost cities (to which I then appended one from the inlaws side), so I always thought I might one day continue with a few more. It only took me four years, but now I think I have another 9 or 10 at hand to carry on. I'll include Hamborn in the list as number 11 and continue counting so here comes Bonn as number 12.

I initially didn't include Bonn, because my grandparents only moved there to study, so it was kind of an ephemeral presence our family had there. Then again, they first met there, and they both studied in other universities before doing their final years at Bonn, so history could have turned out differently, and their separate decisions to come to Bonn were kind of crucial for my existence to happen. And come to think of it, that's pretty much the same level of importance as Strasbourg has, where Heinrich and Maria met a generation earlier. Although I don't recall anybody having a romantic attachment to Bonn, in contrast to the Strasbourg affinity that has been passed down several generations.

Bonn doesn't need much of an introduction, as it served as the federal capital of West Germany for some four decades. (It also happens to be twinned with Oxford.) Just to note that before the war it was mainly the home of a well-respected university, which had been set up in 1818 after Bonn became part of Prussia. Located on the main north-south axis along the river Rhine, it was much more convenient to reach by rail than many of the smaller historic university towns such as Göttingen or Marburg. In the 1930s, it had around 100,000 residents.

What happened was that Heinrich's son Richard, after studying two semesters in Göttingen and one in Vienna, arrived in Bonn in 1929. Ruth moved to Bonn in the summer of 1930, after studying in Freiburg, Münster, and Freiburg again. In choosing Bonn, both moved closer to their parents, based at Wuppertal and Rheydt, respectively. They took their exams in 1933 and 1934, respectively. They finished more quickly than planned as they feared the imminent removal of some of their profs who were Jewish, including the mathematician Felix Hausdorff and the chemist Heinrich Rheinboldt.

There are lots of photos of Richard and Ruth from their student days in Bonn, of which I have included a few in my "every picture" series (eg: Richard, Ruth), although they don't offer much of a sense of place. I'm not sure if their correspondence from the student days has survived - if so I haven't seen it yet - so I don't even know the addresses where they lived in Bonn. So, more or less randomly, I picked an old postcard of the market square, because it is still recognisable today:

source

And here is a view I really like of the Poststrasse:

source

After preparing this entry, I revisited Bonn and realised this view is just a few metres away from the main entrance of the main station Bonn Hbf, so this is basically what you see when you come out of the station and cross the road (or pass through the tunnel, choose exit "Poststrasse"). The cigar shop on the right was obviously destroyed and rebuilt in the same contour but without the decorative elements. It is now a Macdonalds. The building on the left appears to have survived (probably the reason why the same contour was rebuilt on the right, to keep the symmetry).

I also visited the Macke-Haus, where expressionist painter August Macke lived and worked until the first world war. Will rave about that separately.

Previously, I had visited the city a few times in the 2010s, as one of my children was studying there for a couple of years - back then the Macke Haus was closed for major refurbishment, but I did enjoy the Kunsthalle and the Arithmeum, two of the modern museums in the south of the city where the government quarters used to be.

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim and Hamborn.

blue riders on film

Some thoughts on

Münter & Kandinsky
Marcus O. Rosenmüller
Germany 2024

I didn't quite get my act together to catch the Münter & Kandinsky exhibition at the Tate Modern this summer, but I made up for it by watching the movie at Dusseldorf, and I also visited the Macke Haus at Bonn and revisited some of the Blue Rider works at the K20 at Dusseldorf this month. Earlier this year, I saw the Kandinsky and af Klint exhibition and read the book about the women of the Blue Rider, so all in all I feel I have my blue riders lined up reasonably well this year.

So, the film - a bit like the one about Hilde Coppi I saw a day earlier - is pegged to the female protagonist being troubled by Nazi officials, and then reflecting on the twists and turns of her life that brought her to this point. Unlike Coppi, Münter manages to outwit the Nazis in that her stash of Kandinsky paintings remains undiscovered when they raid her house. Looking back from that point, it's a pretty straight telling of the story of Münter's life from the time she signed up for Kandinsky's art course in Munich to the time he ghosted her as we would say now.

I've seen critics moaning that there is too much soap opera in this film and not enough art, but I was reasonably happy with the coverage of the art. The artsy angles of the locations, from the light-flooded landscapes to the hand-painted staircases, come out well, and I felt I did get to relate to Münter's creative process sufficiently. I was also excited to see that she appears to have taken lots of photos as well - will look out for those. Maybe the title is a bit of a misnomer, as Kandinsky spends much of the time withdrawing himself from her attentions, and accordingly we see less of him and also get less than perfect insight into his creative work (ironically, IMDB lists a Russian title for the movie which translates as "Kandinsky and his muse" managing to be both offensive and a misrepresentation of the film). Also, the other artists of the group, Marc, Macke, Klee, Jawlensky, Werefkin only drift by rather fleetingly. So to fix that, one could have reduced the time frame to the time when all of them were alive (until 1914) and the title characters were together. Or have separate biopics for the others. I would be really keen on one covering Macke and Klee's trip to Tunis - but that's obviously another story for another movie. But as a Münter biopic, and in terms of flying the flag for female artists wronged by the arts world, this film does the job.

IMDB

PS 25.11. Upon my return I read the review in epd-film - they object that the film does too much telling as opposed to showing, and that it is a lot more conventional than the work of the artists concerned. Which is of course true, but in a biopic, we just want the story of the relevant life or lives to be told. A piece of film art as revolutionary as the Blue Rider paintings were would be interesting but would not serve this purpose. I would also watch it though.

good news

It doesn't happen very often these days, but my latest feature has some very good news to report, so enjoy:

Prophylactic progress against AIDS

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 22, 18 November 2024, Pages R1109-R1111

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Last year's thread is here .

Even 40 years after its discovery, HIV is still a major health problem across the global south. This transmission electron micrograph shows HIV-1 virus particles budding out of an infected H9 cell. (Photo: NIAID/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)

cycling with cellos

Some thoughts on
Highway cello
by Kenneth Wilson
City Village Books 2023

This book found me because I am known for cycling around Oxford with a cello on my back, and this author cycled from Hadrian's Wall to Rome with a cello on the back of his bike, which he used for busking in various places along the way. I haven't done that yet, but yes we do seem to have a lot in common in the cycling and cello departments:

• Once upon a time I cycled a similar distance in a similar time (3500 km in 35 days), from Germany around five of the six sides of France's hexagon, and back into Germany, carrying camping equipment but no cello. In my defence, I was learning to play the double bass back then, and Heinrich, our family cello, hadn't been restored yet.
• Since ca. 2004, I have been cycling with cellos around Oxford on a regular basis, first carrying them for the young cellist in the family, and more recently for my own musical adventures. I reckon that those short journeys taken roughly once a week over 20 years must add up to a similar distance as Hadrian's Wall to Rome.
• I have played a very similar kind of repertoire on the cello, including obviously the easier ones of the Bach suites, as well as the Swan and some folk tunes such as Sally gardens. Haven't done busking as such but played some of that outdoors eg in Florence Park during the Plague years.
• I was travelling in France at the same time as he was, but sadly missed him. I went to Nimes and then to the Drome region (see my photos here), must have crossed his route travelling by train from Avignon to Strasbourg.

However, these aren't necessary qualifications for reading the book. As far as I can tell (despite being too close to the subject matter) it is a really charming travelogue and manages to convey aspects of cello and cycling cultures to a lay audience, with other bits like old churches thrown in as well. The author used to be a vicar before he lost his faith, so there are bits about religion and philosophy too. I am surprised that it is self published (with the publisher's name obviously made up for the occasion), as I would have thought that there are quite a few travel publishers out there that would have happily taken it on.

I was pleased to learn about things like warmshowers, crazyguyonabike, and the street performance festival at Chalon sur Saone, which happens annually in July (Chalon dans la rue). Although I had been aware of carbon fibre cellos, it was interesting to read the background story of how they were invented.

Given my parallel experience, there are bound to be things I disagree with. I would never put the cello directly on the bike. I like to think that using my soft body as a shock absorber, the instrument is quite safe on my back, and it's not nearly as heavy as it looks. I also like the fact that it makes me look like a giant on the bike, so hopefully drivers will stay clear of me. And the contraption the author used looks downright dangerous to me.

Also, being a lazy kind of person, I would have avoided all those mountains he's so keen on climbing. I would find myself a nice river and follow its course - there are suitable cycle paths along the Rhine and the Danube, for instance. I find it much more civilised to go with the flow than to sweat on the serpentines. On that note, if he had stayed with the river Saone beyond Chalon and then followed the Rhone, I might have seen him busking in Avignon. (Considering his interest in church history, he really should have gone via Avignon.) Too bad.

PS here's my little library of cello-related memoirs and biographies (listed alphabetically by the last name of the relevant cellist):

• Mercedes Cebrián: Cocido y violonchelo
• Jetta Marie Vasak: My bohemian heritage (about the family of Zdeňka Černý, portrayed as "the greatest Bohemian violoncellist" in a famous Mucha poster).
• Hilary and Piers DuPre: A genius in the family
• John Holt: Never too late
• Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Inherit the truth / Die Wahrheit erben
• Gregor Piatigorsky: Cellist
• Eric Siblin: The cello suites: In search of a baroque masterpiece
• Kenneth Wilson: Highway cello

troubling history

Some thoughts on

In Liebe, Eure Hilde (From Hilde, with love)
Andreas Dresen; starring Liv Lisa Fries
Germany, 2024

As I'm a massive fan of Babylon Berlin and Charlotte Ritter as played by Liv Lisa Fries, I would have watched anything with Fries in a vaguely pre-1945 role, and was lucky to catch this new film in Germany a few weeks after its release.

In a sense the role of Hilde Coppi is not that far away from Charlotte Ritter, only a couple of years younger and also a secretary, so one could almost read this as a Babylon Berlin sequel in which a romantic summer is interspersed with a rather brutal awakening. Except that Babylon Berlin was fiction and this story is real. And very much underappreciated so far.

I think I had heard the term Rote Kapelle for this network of anti-Nazi resistance activists before, but that's about as far as my knowledge went. (Wikipedia translates it as "red orchestra," but note that a Kapelle is rather a small orchestra as you would employ for a dance event or as a marching band, emphatically not a symphony orchestra.) None of the names rang any bells. The simple explanation: The resistance people who were celebrated (to a degree and not by all) in (western) Germany were christian-conservative nationalists who wanted to save their fatherland from that evil spirit that was bound to drive it over a cliff. Many of the members of the Rote Kapelle, on the other hand, were communists. (Note, however, that the Nazis liked to brand resistance activists with this label to tarnish them as communists - in reality some may have become involved with other motivations, eg humanitarian.) Thus, even though I think many more of them perished than from the July 20 coup attempt or the White Rose student movement, their memory was all but wiped out in the west - but celebrated in the GDR.

The other thing that left me stirred and shaken is that the film's protagonist Hilde Coppi, born in May 1909, is exactly the same age as my paternal grandparents whom I knew well in their later lives. Like them, she saw her world fall apart in her mid twenties, when fascism took over - something I often think about as it's now happening again. Ruth and Richard managed to keep a low profile and survived with luck, whereas Hilde happened to get involved with those communists and shared their fate. With some change of makeup, the same actors could have played my grandparents (in a less eventful movie) - and conversely, with a different set of personal contacts, my grandparents could have ended up in the red orchestra. Very troubling stuff.

Focussing on Hilde Coppi is also a clever trick as it enables the storytelling to avoid the gruesome torture that must have been inflicted on other members of the Rote Kapelle. Due to her rather marginal role and the fact that she was pregnant when she was arrested, she didn't get the worst treatment, and we are left to imagine what may have happened to her husband and his friends.

And then, if you're not sufficiently stirred by the end, there is a special guest for you - Hilde's son, whose birth in prison we witnessed in some detail, speaks an afterword. Now 81, historian Hans Coppi Jr. doesn't specifically talk about the present resurgence of fascism, but we are left to imagine what he thinks of it.

No sign of a UK release date so far - but I guess with all the Nazi history in it, this one must have better chances then most other German films. Might add it to my films not shown list for now, just to be on the safe side.

a violin with a famous name

Pirate luthier adventures continued:

Jumping back to violin number 16),

which needed the fingerboard to be glued back on, and it took me a while to gather the courage for the whole hide glue business, but it worked quite well and hasn't fallen apart yet.

This violin, which I bought for £25, is branded Sebastian Klotz, but sadly not by the Mittenwald Luthier, but by Yamaha Malaysia, who appear to have trademarked his name, written as one word, as you see on the label:

The rather posh case (with a hygrometer - but maybe that's more common in Malaysia?) and the rosin are branded skv for Sebastian Klotz violins, I suppose. I hear the Klotz family are still building violins in Mittenwald, maybe they should send their lawyers.

Apart from the fingerboard and a bit of scraping on the bridge, there wasn't much to do on this one, but as I had the tailpin out, I wondered if I could take a photo through the hole, and that turned out quite nicely, so here's the view of the very solid looking skv soundpost.

First impressions: The violin sounds very much like the Stentor student models - good enough for folk but nothing special. I think it's just right for holiday practice so I've taken it to Dusseldorf where it will stay on top of my grandmother's old piano. As such it will stay in my collection so I'd better add the tag of my much neglected "all our instruments" series.

I've now exchanged the photos in my freegle ad for the one at the top of this entry, think people were getting bored with the ones I had for a year and a half, which showed violin 1) before and after restoration.

Previously in the pirate luthier series:

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 4) is a modern Chinese one which I bought from one musical friend and sold to another, no work needed.

violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) is my new favourite and the one I currently play in folk sessions.

violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a new bridge. Good enough for folk I would say. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 9) is the one which needed a new bridge and a tailgut and turned out to sound quite lovely on the E string. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 10) is the broken one with traces of multiple repair attempts. I'm still gathering courage to try and fix that one.

violin 11) is the 3/4 sold by JP Guivier & Co Ltd. in the 1950s but may actually be older than that. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 12) is a full-size Lark which a freegle user kindly donated and delivered after seeing my offer. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violins 13) through to 15) I bought locally through gumtree or facebook, nothing special to report.

violin 16) is the Sebastian Klotz branded one described above, sadly not made by the Mittenwald Luthier, but by Yamaha Malaysia, who appear to have trademarked his name.

violin 17) is the supersized violin with a very strong sound.

violin 18) is the slightly drunken but nice sounding violin from Poland.

violin 19) is a Stentor studend violin which only needed a little TLC, and within less than a week I had it brushed up and ready to move to our local school. The most intriguing problem it had was that somebody had put in the bridge the wrong way round, with the lower slope under the G string.

brown algae and blue carbon

There is another COP climate summit coming up this week, and to fend off the evil spirits of fossil fuel dependency I've written another climate related feature to appear just ahead of the event. So delegates have something to read when they get bored. This time it's about kelp both as a casualty and as a potential saviour in the climate catastrophe. I'm afraid the choice between these two paths rests very much with us (ie humanity). So judging on current performance in global affairs, not much hope there.

Anyhow, the feature is out now:

Brown algae and blue carbon

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 21, 4 November 2024, Pages R1059-R1061

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Last year's thread is here .

Kelps can capture and sequester carbon on a scale that is significant for climate mitigation. (Photo: freddy an/Pixabay.)

a slightly drunken violin

Pirate luthier adventures continued:

violin number 18)

This is one that I am going to return to the people who have inherited it, as they want to keep it in the family, which is always a good thing. It came from Poland originally, and looks a little bit like my number 1), so could be Markneukirchen perhaps?

It needed a bridge, tailgut, and nut. After a few attempts with tailguts made from the bits of gut string I have lying around, I gave up and bought a pack of five nylon ones.

Inside, the soundpost is in place but leans at a crazy angle. On closer inspection, I realised that the hole for the tailpin is decidedly off centre as well, and the bass bar looks quite rough, all of which left me with the impression that the maker was perhaps a little bit drunk, or couldn't quite get their fiddle straight.

However, my preliminary setup with random old strings revealed that the instrument sounded quite nice, so the owners agreed to invest in a new set of strings, after which it sounded even better. Especially at Baroque pitch which I initially used because one of the pegs refused to stick at modern pitch. Compared to many of the fiddles I've handled, it has a warmer sound at the top and nothing boxy about the lower end, so all good as far as I can tell.

It came with an interesting but somewhat damaged old bow, which I'll try to fix up next.

In other pirate luthier news, I have picked up a donation of 19 dead cello bows earlier this week, and delivered violins 15) and 19) to the local secondary school which was looking for instruments for a violin club, providing access to violin playing to children who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity.

PS to see some professional luthiers at work, see this lovely photo gallery. I believe this is the workshop which has internal windows to the RAM's little museum, so when we visited the museum back in the old days we could watch the luthiers at work. I thought the museum had closed permanently, as the gate was always locked when I came by, but on checking up I find it's open on Fridays only. Need to revisit - hoping the luthiers don't take the Fridays off ...

Update 8.12.2024 I've now managed to rehair the bow for this violin as well, greatly benefiting from the YouTube tutorials of Giles Nehr. As it's only my second rehair, it looks a little bit dishevelled, which kind of matches the drunken look of the violin, but it does work.

Previously in the pirate luthier series:

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 4) is a modern Chinese one which I bought from one musical friend and sold to another, no work needed.

violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) is my new favourite and the one I currently play in folk sessions.

violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a new bridge. Good enough for folk I would say. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 9) is the one which needed a new bridge and a tailgut and turned out to sound quite lovely on the E string. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 10) is the broken one with traces of multiple repair attempts. I'm still gathering courage to try and fix that one.

violin 11) is the 3/4 sold by JP Guivier & Co Ltd. in the 1950s but may actually be older than that. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violin 12) is a full-size Lark which a freegle user kindly donated and delivered after seeing my offer. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.

violins 13) through to 15) I bought locally through gumtree or facebook, nothing special to report.

violin 16) is branded Sebastian Klotz, but sadly not by the Mittenwald Luthier, but by Yamaha Malaysia, who appear to have trademarked his name. I've now managed to glue on the fingerboard and it hasn't fallen off yet. This one now lives in Germany where I use it for holiday practice when I'm there.

violin 17) is the supersized violin with a very strong sound.

violin 18) is the slightly drunken violin described above.

violin 19) is a Stentor studend violin which only arrived last Sunday, and within less than a week I had it brushed up and ready to move to our local school. The most intriguing problem it had was that somebody had put in the bridge the wrong way round, with the lower slope under the G string.

star struck

History of astronomy typically begins with the ancient civilisations and the ways stargazing changed their view of the world. The book "Starborn" by Roberto Trotta goes back further. The author explores the question how humans evolved under a starry sky and whether we would have turned out different under a permanent cloud cover. Some of the answers are mindboggling yet convincing.

Read all about it in my latest essay review:

Stars in their eyes

Chemistry & Industry Volume 88, Issue 10, October 2024, Page 35

access via:

Wiley Online Library (paywalled PDF of the whole review section)

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I'm happy to send a PDF on request.

Here's a snippet:

More intriguing still, Trotta recounts a hypothesis that argues in favour of a shared human experience of observing the stars dating back more than 70,000 years ago. The Pleiades, as we know them today, are six stars, but many cultures from Ancient Greeks through to Australian Aborigines associate these stars with a legend of seven sisters, and one of them disappearing. With modern telescopes, astronomers can see the seventh sister, too close to one of the others to be distinguishable by the naked eye. They also see a few more, so there is no explanation for the number seven. Calculating back the movements, however, they have found that around 100,000 years ago, an average human eye would have seen seven Pleiades. Thus the myth of the seventh sister lost could be the oldest evidence of human observation of the night sky, as well as just about the only thing that humanity has preserved from the time before the expansion out of Africa.

I don't think the title captures the content of the book very well - it makes me think of how our very atoms have come from stardust, whereas the main gist of the book is how our minds have been shaped by the sight of the firmament. Hence the title of this entry.