crossing the Mediterranean

Humans have been crossing the Mediterranean for millennia, even before the Phoenicians invented the ways and means to build proper ships. I took a recent study of the ancient genomes of numerous people living in the Phoenician colonies around the Western Mediterranean as an excuse to look into the ancient travels on the Mediterranean, including when and how people first reached the islands. Your regular reminder that humans have always migrated and will continue to do so.

My feature is out now:

Mediterranean movements

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 13, 7 July 2025, Pages R639-R641

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.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

Genomes from Punic burials reveal the surprising diversity of the people who lived in communities that were culturally Phoenician. The image shows pendant masks from Carthage made of glass paste in the 4th to 3rd centuries BCE. (Photo from the exhibit Carthage: The Immortal Myth inside the Colosseum and taken by G41rn8/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).)

a bookish book

Some thoughts on

The bookbinder of Jericho
Pip Williams
Vintage Paperback 2024

I loved Pip Williams's Dictionary of lost words, so kept an eye open for her follow-up novel, which has now crossed my path in a matching edition. (Faced with an ever-growing TBR pile, there is no point ordering books, I just let fate decide.) Although this is not quite a sequel, we are staying in the realm of Oxford University Press, and Esme's dictionary of lost words gets a cameo appearance here. In fact, this novel grew out of a discovery the author made when she researched the first one.

Williams found that in the early 20th century lots of women worked for the Press in the book binding process, but have been forgotten by written history. And this led her to a remarkable frontline between Town and Gown, and between the working folks and posh people. The line runs along Walton Street in Jericho - to the West of it the books published by the Press were typeset, printed, bound, etc., at that point still with lots of manual labour, and just opposite on the other side of the road, at Somerville College, the first generation of young women that had the opportunity to obtain degrees from Oxford University were studying the contents of those very same books. Even their exam papers were produced on the other side of the road.

Our fictional lead character, Peggy, has been working in the bindery since the age of 12 but harbours the ambition to cross the road into Somerville, to "read the books, not bind them". It looked like an impossible ambition in Victorian times, even more so for an orphan looking after her twin sister with autism, but World War I helps to stir the class system just enough to open a plausible path for her to achieve that.

Williams invents the characters standing in for those who were too unimportant to have been recorded by history, but the more notable people that pop up in the story are historic, including for instance the principal of Somerville, and the famous Somervillian Vera Brittain (author of Testament of youth), as well as the upper echelons at OUP.

Her local knowledge is amazing (especially for somebody normally living in Australia, but I assume she must have spent some time in Oxford). Just one thing occurred to me that she may have missed: People go to the cinema in her story, and I think the Electric theatre in Castle Street is mentioned as the place they go. In fact, Jericho got its own cinema during that time, the North Oxford Kinema, which is still standing and now known as the Phoenix Picturehouse. It opened in March 1913, so the characters in the novel would have walked past it and might have noticed a new cinema popping up in their neighbourhood.

Like the first novel, this one is also a heartwarming fairytale driven by social justice and feminist themes. Surprisingly, after the novel about words in dictionaries, the author managed to produce an even more bookish book.

PS re-reading the blurb on the back of my paperback edition after posting this entry, I noticed that none of the things that I discussed above and that are obviously crucial to me get mentioned there. The presentation there goes to great lengths to avoid the mention of books, Oxford, Jericho, education etc. Trying to sell it as a novel about what women do when the men are off to fight a war. Of which there are hundreds of others I suspect, so not at all what makes this book special.

Other reviews etc:

Here is an appreciation from Jericho Online

A Guardian piece about the author and the book

a lady in red

Pirate Luthier update

What happened in June? I haven't quite launched the big give-away I was planning, but the Freegle ad looking for violin cases (to be able to give away violins that currently don't have a case) has led to a few interesting follow-ups. One was that I gave two childrens sized violins (numbers 10 with the neck glued back on and 14, a half-sized Lark) to an organisation that gives free initial violin lessons to children at festivals, so these two fiddles may be in use at Glastonbury Festival as this blog entry goes live. Very exciting.

It also led to two new violins coming into the pirate workshop. Number 26 is an old European model that I'm just setting up with a new bridge and then returning to its family. It was described to me as a 7/8 size (like the ladies violin from last year) but it's rather small for that, closer to 3/4 according to my measurements. With a matching bow that is also between 3/4 and 7/8 size. I'm loving the historic case lined with red felt, so I took lots of photos of the violin in its case:

The other just came in yesterday, so I'll write about it later.

List of violins 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). I bought it very cheap on gumtree, mainly because I needed a case for number 1). 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) was my second favourite and the one I played in folk sessions for roughly a year until number 22) showed up.

violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

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 June 2024.

violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

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 June 2024.

violin 10) is the 3/4 sized one with a broken neck and traces of multiple repair attempts, which I've now repaired. I kept it for a couple of months to check the neck stays in place, then gave it away to a good cause in June 2025.

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 June 2024.

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 June 2024.

violin 13) is still broken

violin 14) is a half-size Lark which I gave away to a good cause in June 2025.

violin 15) is a 3/4 size Stentor student 2, which I gave away to a local school in October 2024

violin 16) is the Sebastian Klotz branded one, 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, which I restored and returned to its family.

violin 19) is a Stentor student 1 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.

violin 20) is a Stentor student 1 violin I bought via GumTree. It sounds really nice for what it is, thanks in part to a good set-up with Dominant strings. My current plan is to make this one an official Cowley Orchestra instrument.

violin 21) is a nameless student violin I bought via facebook, not quite sure what to think of it. The fingerboard is horizontal, which is all wrong and may mean there is not enough pressure on the bridge to produce a good sound.

violin 22) is the 19th century Guarneri copy, still my favourite (although I'll have to fix that crack at some point).

violin 23) is a nameless student violin I bought from a charity shop. It looks unused but had no strings, so I set it up with a set of spare strings that came with another violin. It turned out to be no trouble at all and sounds ok for an instrument that looks really cheap (with the purfling painted on).

violin 24) is the densely cratered one I found lying on a chair at Oxfam, and which I currently play at sessions.

violin 25) is the fleamarket find from Neuss

violin 26) is the lady in red described above, which has now rejoined its family.

Balance 27.6.2025:
Of the 26 violins listed above, 7 received via freegle, 3 from friends and family, 14 bought (gumtree, facebook, charity shops, flea markets, cost ranging £ 10 to £45), 2 taken in for repair only and returned to their families.
Of the 24 acquired, 8 given away via freegle, 2 given to a local school, 2 sold to musical friends, 1 moved to Germany for holiday practice, 9 currently in house and ready to play, 2 in house and still broken.

List of non-violins in the pirate luthier series:

An old Irish banjo

guitar 1) is the 100 year-old one from Valencia which I set up with frets and strings and handed back to its owner.

guitar 2) is one I spotted in a charity shop "sold as seen" for a very affordable price with nothing more than a broken string, and I bought and repaired it because I knew the owner of the next one needed one while their guitar was out of service.

guitar 3) had a broken neck which I glued back on with hide glue at the same time when I repaired violin 10). It's holding so far.

and finally a shout-out to our family-built hammered dulcimer, which dates from 2016, long before I got any ideas about violins.

the big story of tiny forests

I used to get quite a few stories from Earthwatch Europe back in the noughties, when they sent expeditions to lots of places around the world. Nowadays they focus on issues closer to home such as butterfly counts and water quality, so there aren't so many different ecosystems involved, hence fewer features to write (although I did one on citizen science in 2021).

Recently I heard a talk from Claire Narraway at the Oxford Cafe Scientifique about their tiny forests programme, and was intrigued by the way the idea has travelled around the world, pioneered in Japan by Akira Miyawaki, and being scaled up in India, to arrive on some 300 tennis-court-sized plots in the UK. So I wrote a feature about it and also went to the local tiny forest in Meadow Lane to take a few photos.

My feature is out now:

How tiny forests became a big thing

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 12, 23 June 2025, Pages R587-R589

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.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

Oxford's very own tiny forest in Meadow Lane. Own photo.

deep down

As an armchair explorer of life under extreme conditions, I always enjoy reading the accounts of people who dare to go to these dangerous places themselves. One of them is Susan Casey, whose book on deep sea dives is informed by her own participation in some of the exploration as well as by immersing herself in the weird and wonderful world of those people who are prepared to go to the bottom of the oceans. While I had covered the 20th century explorations in my books, it was enlightening to read about the recent multi-record breaking exploits of Victor Vescovo who visited the deepest points of all five oceans in solo dives (the Five Deeps project completed in 2019).

The book is called

The underworld: Journeys to the depths of the oceans
Susan Casey
Penguin 2024

and my review is out now:

Oceanic exploration

Chemistry & Industry Volume 89, Issue 6, June 2025, Page 30

access via:

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

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

dvořák's American adventures

Some thoughts on

Dvorak in Love: A light-hearted dream
Original title of the Czech edition: Scherzo capriccioso
1984
Josef Škvorecký

I have always been a fan of Antonín Dvořák's works from the American period (1893-1895), including his cello concerto in B minor, the New World symphony, the American quartet, the Sonatina, and the humoresque. I did not however, have a very clear view of how this body of work came into being, i.e. how the composer's "discovery" of this new world came about.

Josef Škvorecký's (1924-2012) light-hearted and indeed boisterous novelisation of this part of the composer's life gives a very vivid impression of how it may have happened. Although the second part of the title seems to suggest it's probably imagined. I guess to find out which parts of this were true I will have to re-read the relevant 30 pages of Neil Wenborn's biography: Dvořák: His life and music, which didn't leave much of a lasting impression when I read them more than 10 years ago.

Škvorecký's version is a very elaborate choreography swirling around just about everybody who had anything to do with the composer's decision to move to New York, and then with the decision not to stay after the expiration of his first contract. The best parts go to the women around him, including his employer, the very remarkable Jeannette Thurber (1850-1946), his wife Anna, her older sister Josephine, and his daughter Otylia. Men come in as love interests for these formidable women, and also for comic relief, which often involves some very heavy drinking.

Many of the chapters are like crowded rooms where it is at times difficult to keep track of the many characters and their multiple interactions, with the narration typically jumping between times as they reminisce about earlier encounters with each other or with the great composer. With hindsight I should have drawn a flow chart for this. The author must have had one and I imagine it may have had a beautiful symmetry too complex for me to grasp while juggling all these connections in my mind while reading.

Leaving aside the gossipy bits involving a lot of heavy drinking and extramarital adventures, there is enough food for musical thought to justify reading the book as a source to learn about Dvořák's work of the American period. Musical and other soundscape influences of the New World that we now find immortalised in his works are pointed out and put into their biographical context (or quite possibly into an imagined context). Conversely, there is also some thoughts on how Dvorak's work in New York influenced the nascent American music scene, and how both sides of the deal might have co-evolved further, if Dvořák had decided to stay in New York. Which he might have done if his daughter, allegedly torn between two admirers, had opted for the one based in the US. So this musical question kind of justifies the reporting of young Otilya's New World adventures.

Apart from the works mentioned above, the American (inspired) output also includes a string quintet (with a second viola) and a suite (written for piano then arranged for orchestra), both of which I only discovered recently, and the opera Rusalka, which strangely didn't capture me when I listened to it once or twice. Will try again.

the Trimbach connection

Ten years ago, I looked into the story of the miners migrating from Fischbach (Nahe) to Markirch (Sainte Marie Aux Mines) and mentioned several interesting leads connected to the Trimbach family which stayed in Markirch for several generations. (NB I'm using the German name for Sainte Marie aux Mines because it's a lot shorter. As I explained in the migrating miners entry, the town was split between territories, languages and confessions for several centuries.) There is a likely Huguenot connection, as well as a link to a wine-growing business still active today. All safely buried in a great big materials file I compiled at the time.

I was reminded of the Trimbachs now because I became interested in family names that are also place names and go back far enough to support the hypothesis that the first in the name line took the name of the place where he came from, for instance after being displaced and on arrival at a new place becoming known as the person from the previous place.

So Trimbach is such a case, and intriguingly one place with this name is half way on the well trodden path of the migrating miners between Fischbach and Markirch. Another is in Switzerland. But which could it be? Let's introduce some Trimbach people first:

We're starting from the supremely unsearchable Paul Simon, born 1740 in Markirch, who migrated to Böchingen, Palatinate, where his descendants became entangled with the Klundt Clan.

His mother was Maria Susanna Trimbach * 1713 + 1752 Markirch. Her male line ancestry goes:

Paul Trimbach * 1682/83 (calc.) Echery (now part of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines) ~ 1682 Markirch oo Maria Salome Klein five children + 1760 Markirch aged 77

Johann Georg Trimbach ~ 1635 Markirch oo (II.) 1667 Elisabeth Saass + 1693 Echery (the same person, identified by baptism and death dates and names of parents and first wife, is known as Paul Trimbach in the Gaudel genealogy)

Jakob Trimbach oo 1623 Ermelind Monschat (Irmel Besuchet) from Lapoutroie + 1669 Markirch

Jean Jacques Trimbach * around 1570 oo Susanne Marchand at least three children including a Jean Trimbach who on 15.9.1625 married Marguerite Reisser in Riquewihr. I'm assuming he is the same Jean Trimbach who in 1626 established himself as a wine grower in that very town, according to the Trimbach website. The business moved a couple of times while staying in the Trimbach family and is now located in Ribeauvillé. (Incidentally both Ribeauvillé and Riquewihr are today tourist destinations for all things Alsatian.) If I've got my maths right, the founder must be my 9xgreat grand uncle.

Laurent Trimbach * around 1540 Markirch oo 1570/71 Marie Anne Sturm in Riquewihr

the name line ends here, but six generations of Trimbachs in one spot isn't too shabby.

Now one village with the name of Trimbach is in the northeast corner of Alsace region, around 100 km north-northeast of Markirch. It has always had just a few hundred residents (435 in 1793). I was keen to connect the name to this one, as it is on the route from Fischbach, but others seem to have other information:

The history page of the Trimbach winery, however, says the family came to Markirch from Switzerland in the 16th century to work in the silver mines. There is a Trimbach town in the Canton Solothurn in the north of Switzerland, not all too far from Alsace (also just over 100 km from Markirch), so that would make sense too.

Trimbach is one of three names in my family tree that appear on wine labels to this day. The others are Klundt and Minges. All three are in the ancestry of Barbara Klundt (1847-1886).

The miners' tower at Echery.
Image source: Wikipedia / Von Rauenstein - Selbst fotografiert, CC BY-SA 3.0

In the hope that this will grow into a series, here's my nucleus list of blog entries exploring name/place connections:

1. Wolff (named after the Wolffskotten farm in Styrum);
2. Zeuzheim; further details re. the Zeuzheim family
3. Trimbach

save the fungi

Today's issue of Current Biology contains a special theme section on fungi, with lots of fascinating fungal facts. My contribution is focused on the conservation of fungal species which has long been a neglected field. Only this year a major catching up effort catapulted the number of fungi in the IUCN Red List to more than 1,000.

Like plants and animals, many fungi are at risk of extinction due to the effects of habitat loss, land use change, the climate catastrophe and/or invasive species. Only that the threats are much less well known in fungi, so a lot of work remains to be done.

My feature is out now:

Fungi in peril

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 11, 9 June 2025, Pages R438-R440

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.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

Cover of Current Biology vol 35 issue 11. Cover image: the fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, releases its spores in the early morning light. Photograph © Jason O' Brien.

more violins to give away

Pirate Luthier update

After the arrival of violin no. 25, which I found during my recent travel on a flea market in Neuss, Germany, I now have ten violins in house that are ready to play, so I guess the time has come again to give away or lend out a few of these. The limiting factor is cases and bows, so if any takers have the accessories but are just lacking the instrument itself, that would help releasing more of them back into the wild. (I could rehair a few of the hairless bows I have, but cases are trickier to conjure up, I've already posted a call for cases on Freegle.)

First of all, number 25) looks like a European one at least as old as I am - so it falls into the more interesting category, as opposed to the more modern Chinese fiddles which I'm less interested in (although I have also handled a few that were ok). The derelict case made of cardboard and lined with paper would perhaps suggest 1930s, as it is similar to the one that came with violin 1).

It came with strings GDA that are black at both ends, like the ones on 22) and I added a random E string I had lying around. With that it is playable but not quite as nice as my favourites 22) and 24). Will play around with the setup a bit to see if I can improve it.

I think part of the reason for the weaker sound is that the angle of the neck is too flat, which I can do nothing about. Will try moving the bridge a millimetre or two:

I'm planning to offer on Freegle this month the full size violins 21) and 23) (see list below), each as a complete set with case and bow, and the 3/4 violin 10) which has a historic wooden case but doesn't have a 3/4 bow. That leaves me with the six more interesting (=old and European) ones. For any of those, I would want to know that they go to the right person who will be happy with it. Also, I am short of cases and bows for these, so if anybody out there has the accessories and is only short of the instrument, that might be a chance to match up instruments and cases. Also, if anybody has invested in a fancy case and has the common or garden one sitting around in the attic, I'd be interested in adopting it.

List of violins 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). I bought it very cheap on gumtree, mainly because I needed a case for number 1). 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) was my second favourite and the one I played in folk sessions for roughly a year until number 22) showed up.

violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

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 June 2024.

violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.

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 June 2024.

violin 10) is the 3/4 sized one with a broken neck and traces of multiple repair attempts, which I've now repaired.

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 2024.

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

violin 16) is the Sebastian Klotz branded one, 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, which I restored and returned to its family.

violin 19) is a Stentor student 1 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.

violin 20) is a Stentor student 1 violin I bought via GumTree. It sounds really nice for what it is, thanks in part to a good set-up with Dominant strings. My current plan is to make this one an official Cowley Orchestra instrument.

violin 21) is a nameless student violin I bought via facebook, not quite sure what to think of it. The fingerboard is horizontal, which is all wrong and may mean there is not enough pressure on the bridge to produce a good sound.

violin 22) is the 19th century Guarneri copy, still my favourite (although I'll have to fix that crack at some point).

violin 23) is a nameless student violin I bought from a charity shop. It looks unused but had no strings, so I set it up with a set of spare strings that came with another violin. It turned out to be no trouble at all and sounds ok for an instrument that looks really cheap (with the purfling painted on).

violin 24) is the densely cratered one I found lying on a chair at Oxfam, and which I currently play at sessions.

violin 25) is the fleamarket find from Neuss described above.

Balance 2.6.2025: Of the 25 violins listed above, 7 received via freegle, 3 from friends and family, 14 bought (gumtree, facebook, charity shops, flea markets, cost ranging £ 10 to £45), 1 taken in for repair only and returned to its family.
Of the 24 acquired, 6 given away via freegle, 2 given to a local school, 2 sold to musical friends, 1 moved to Germany for holiday practice, 10 currently in house and ready to play, 3 in house and still broken.

List of non-violins in the pirate luthier series:

An old Irish banjo

guitar 1) is the 100 year-old one from Valencia which I set up with frets and strings and handed back to its owner.

and finally a shout-out to our family-built hammered dulcimer, which dates from 2016, long before I got any ideas about violins.

more quartets of simple character

In our occasional attempts at playing chamber music, we have very much appreciated the collection of

Original String Quartet Movements of Simple Character

by Walter Höckner.

Now I discovered that there is a sequel to it, containing complete string quartets of simple character, which I found at a local Oxfam shop and added to my quartets collection. A bit of searching revealed that Mr Höckner also did similar editions for string trios, some music for "incomplete" string quartets (so they have something to play while waiting for the last one or two members to show up), for flute quartets, and more. Oh, and a third volume of quartets too. Might take a while to complete the collection without paying extortionate prices to some of these online dealers.

Amazingly, I can't find any information about him as a person. IMSLP, in the entry on the pair of quartet collections, speculates he may be related to Hilmar Höckner, who at least has a Wikipedia entry, as the two edited some works together.

The painting that graces both my quartet volumes is called Haydn quartet and is by the Austrian painter Julius Schmid (1854-1935). I'm still on the lookout for paintings of people playing chamber music and I quite like this one so will show it here on its own:

Scanned from my copy of The String Quartet vol. 2.

Note the lovely violin case taking centre stage at the front - it is the same build as the historic case that came with my current favourite violin, number 22. I do remember that I still need to do a blog entry dedicated to that case.

UPDATE 6.6.2025 When I took the photo of vol I and II, I carefully covered up the address sticker of a previous owner on the cover of vol I. Looking at it again I realised that his address is Simrock House - so he named his house after the original publishing company that first published the quartets (although his edition was a licensed one by Alfred Lengnick for the UK). So I became curious and did a bit of searching. Turns out that Richard Schauer of Simrock House was a music publisher himself, and came to London in 1939 a Jewish refugee from Germany. He died in London in 1952, but the company Schauer & May Ltd. still exists, although it moved out of Simrock House in 2002.
Oh, and the copy of the incomplete quartets arrived today. It contains a preface by Walter Höckner signed in March 1962 at Schloss Ortenburg, a castle in Bavaria (near Passau).

the Zeuzheim Clan

After accidentally discovering the place from which the very rare family name Zeuzheim (Zeutzheim, Zeutzem, Zeitzem) is probably derived, I had a look at my files and found ancient copies from a residents register (Ortsfamilienbuch) of Horchheim, the village (now part of Koblenz) where all known Zeuzheim people appear to have their origins. For direct ancestors we also have copies or transcripts of the relevant documents from the (catholic) church archives. For other descendants, we just go by the book.

So here are the descendants of the earliest Zeuzheim person I know of, namely Johannes Zeutzem. He was married to Magdalena and had at least five children with her, born 1661-1668, and then to Margaretha, with whom he had his last known child, born 1675. No further details are known regarding either of the wives.

Close-up of the Zeuzheim sign on the station of Niederzeuzheim, from the photo I used before.

I'll first list the six children on their own, and then again with all their spouses and descendants. I'm marking twins in the list, as my Krefeld Clan has a conspicuous number of twin births and this seems to be something that came down from the Zeuzheim side. I've also marked godmothers and godfathers where necessary to explain the unexpected choices of posh first names. A few people were employed by the local nobility which may explain some of the high-born godfathers and godmothers. The De la Strada lineage has a similar background in the service of the house of Nassau at Oranienstein (near Diez, just south of Horchheim).

1. Hans Michael ~ 6.3.1661
2. Johannes ~ 2.4.1663
3. Sophia ~ 25.5.1665
4. Lorenz ~ 9.3.1667
5. Eva Elisabeth ~ 27.11.1668
6. Lucas ~ 23.10.1675

Note that in this generation there is also an Anton Zeutzem married to Maria Flory and having children from 1685 to 1695. Not clear what the relation to the family of Johannes is, but it seems to suggest that Johannes is not the only Zeuzheim in his generation. There is also a widower named Jakob Zeutzheim. He died in 1707 aged 54, so this couple would have been a bit younger than our founder couple.

Now the whole clan. I think I have all the grandchildren - it gets confusing after that because the same names are popping up in parallel families and from the data in the register it is not always clear which of the Jakobs or Johanns Z. a particular family should be attached to:

1. Hans Michael ~ 6.3.1661
oo Anna Gertrud Enkrich
1.1 Anna Barbara ~ 15.3.1690
1.2. Otilie * 14. / ~ 17.5.1693
1.3. Maria ~ 21.9.1695
1.4. Eulalia ~ 26.10.1698
1.5. Jakob ~ 17.8.1700 + 2.3.1752
oo 25.1.1729 Maria Magdalena Saur (2nd oo 1754 Joh. Sauer)
1.5.1. Johannes * 5.2.1730
1.5.2. Johannes * 14.11.1731
1.5.3. Anna Katharina * 14.3.1736 oo 11.1.1757 Joseph Margareta, Schuhmacher in Thal
5 children born 1757-1762
oo 23.10.1763 Karl Joseph Henrich
8 children born 1764-1780
1.5.4. Franz * 9.2.1738
1.5.5. Philipp Friedrich 9.2.1741 (godfather: PF Baron von Reiffenberg)
1.5.6. Eleonora Katharina Juliana * 5.7.1743 (godmother: EKJ von Reiffenberg, nee von Wasenburg)
oo 9.1.1765 Johann Irsch, gardener with the baron von Eyhs (NB a bit of tragedy piling up here, Eleonora died in 1768 at age 24, her daughter three years later just before her sixth birthday, and Johann Irsch went on to marry Agnes Nickenich, have four children with her within four years (including a set of twins, one of whom died after 10 days) just to die at age 27.)
1.5.6.1. Theresia * 20.10.1765
1.5.7. Margaretha Helena * 5.7.1743 twins with 1.5.6. Her name changed to Maria Magdalena by the time she oo 11.11.1765 Philipp Delastrada but it's definitely the same person, as per a note on her baptism entry confirming that she's the one who married Philipp. The archivist who sent us the transcripts suggested it is most likely that she was called Lena and abbreviated her first Christian name to M., and when she got married and needed a more official name, somebody wrongly expanded the shorter version into Maria Magdalena. These two are the grandparents of Elisabetha de la Strada.
1.5.8. Anna Gertrud ~5.11.1748
1.5.9. Gertrud * 16.8.1751
1.6. Johann Peter ~ 12.3.1703 oo 6.6.1724 Anna Zander + 9.3.1765 aged 72 (see also GedBas)
1.6.1. Jakob * 3.1.1725
1.6.2. Franz *23.6.1726 + before 1793
oo 30.1.1753 Veronica Freusburger from Valendar + 12.10.1793 aged 66 "ob languore"
6 children including Johann Georg Zeutzheim (*27.11.1758) whose family is on GedBas (they are the only grandchildren of Johann Peter listed there)
1.6.3. Johann Georg * 4.6.1729 + 18.3.1796 from asthma
oo 31.1.1758 Elisabeth Mohr from Kobern + 22.10.1775 aged 41 after long term tuberculosis
7 children including a set of twins
2nd oo 11.6.1776 Anna Katharina Struth + 25.2.1795 aged 67, stroke
1.6.4. Matthias ~ 8.11.1733
1.6.5. Johannes * 28.8.1734 oo 27.6.1763 Maria Volcker from Kamp
1.6.6. Anna Katharina * 11.1.1738 + 8.10.1774
1.6.6.1 Veronika Z. * 6.4.1761 + 17.12.1761 (father: Friedrich Augstein from Ruedesheim)
1.6.6.2. Anna Clara *15.6.1765 + 18.6.1765 (father: Joseph Blath, French soldier)
1.6.7. Albertina Franziska 9.7.1740 (godmother: AF von Heddesdorff)

2. Johannes ~ 2.4.1663 oo Maria Margaretha
2.1 Johannes ~ 28.3.1701

3. Sophia ~ 25.5.1665

4. Lorenz ~ 9.3.1667

5. Eva Elisabeth ~ 27.11.1668

6. Lucas ~ 23.10.1675

NB the Horchheim book notes no death or any other further events for the four youngest children - so we're left to hope they lived happily somewhere else. There are Zeuzheim links to the neighbouring village of Pfaffendorf, for instance, now also a part of Koblenz.

on tour again

I just discovered on youtube that Shakira is on world tour again, currently in the US and Latin America. It's been a while since I last saw her (list below) and various things have happened since then that have kept me away from the big arena gigs. One being a tinnitus that became permanent after the Halestorm gig I saw in 2013, the other the discovery that there are lots of opportunities around here for me to play wrong notes in public, which has shifted the focus of my musical interest from mostly listening to mostly playing. With all that, I missed the El Dorado Tour in 2018 (which also ran into trouble when Shakira had problems with her voice ahead of the first European dates).

Shakira performing at Medellin, Colombia. Photo: Wikipedia

I did watch a very lovely video of the New Jersey show from May 15 though (always good to be able to adjust the volume). From this I figured that the Las mujeres ya no lloren tour promotes an eponymous, all-Spanish album which I missed when it came out last year, so I ordered a copy of that. UPDATE 3.6. CD arrived today, after listening to it twice, I'm a bit underwhelmed, so may not be writing up a review.

Latin American dates are scheduled through to November. If and when the tour comes to Europe, I may have to think about some hearing protection ...

Previous Shakira concerts I attended (some of the pre-blogspot blogposts have disappeared):

London 16.12.2002
Madrid 25.04.2003
Madrid 22.06.2006
Antwerpen 31.01.2007
London 18.03.2007
Köln 08.04.2007
Lyon 17.11.2010
Paris 6.12.2010

PS Bonus video - La quiero a morir / Je l'aime a mourir - this wasn't included in the concert linked to above. This one hour video from Toronto is also lovely - seems to have a lot less advertising than the New Jersey one.

an origin story

In family history research, every new answer tends to create two new questions, so in dealing with this hydra effect, it is always satisfying to find a kind of endpoint such as the place and time where a family name came into being, if only as an excuse to stop digging. I have shared a few such origin stories already, some more hypothetical than others, eg for my lineages of Wolff (named after the Wolffskotten farm in Styrum) and Kauer (leading to the Kauerhof at Nickweiler, mentioned in 1074), and the French connection of Dopheide / d'Oppède.

Now I discovered another one accidentally just by looking out of the window of a train while travelling to Idstein:

Photo of the train station of Niederzeuzheim, Kreis Limburg (Lahn), Hesse, Germany, taken from a train.
Own photo.

Ignore the first bit, "Nieder" just means "Lower" Zeuzheim, there is also an Upper Zeuzheim nearby. Now Zeuzheim is also a really rare and interesting family name which probably arose only once, with Zeutzheim and Zeutzem as spelling variations. My most recent Zeutzheim ancestor Maria Magdalena (baptised Margaretha Helena but definitely the same person) married a de la Strada and later became the grandmother of Elisabetha de la Strada, the founding mother of the Krefeld Clan. She was born in Horchheim (today part of Koblenz) in 1743 and died in Krefeld in 1798.

Her father and paternal grandfather were both born in Horchheim as well, and of her great-grandfather we only have the name Johann Zeutzem (as well as two wives and lots of descendants, will have to prepare an entry on the Zeutzem Clan one day). He must have been born before 1640, so it is a plausible hypothesis that he or his parents were displaced by the Thirty-Years War and may have been settled with the name Zeutzheim as the indication of where they came from. The historic villages of Niederzeuzheim and Oberzeuzheim, today both parts of Hadamar, are about 30 km east-northeast of Koblenz, so this would be the kind of place that people in Horchheim would be just about aware of, a half-day's walking journey away.

Meanwhile the fact that I wasn't aware of the place until I passed through on that train is easily explained by the writing as one word with Nieder- or Ober- prefixed to it. Any online searches for the family name would thus not have included the place name among the results.

In gedbas.de there is a Zeutzheim family in Horchheim descending from Johann Georg Zeutzheim born 1758, so 15 years younger than my Margaretha, could be a brother, nephew or cousin. The other spelling variants yield only more recent results. There are Zeuzheim people in Koblenz to this day, including a roofing company established in 1889.

List of origin stories for name lines (this might become a very irregular series):

• Wolff (named after the Wolffskotten farm in Styrum);
• Kauer (linked to the Kauerhof at Nickweiler, mentioned in 1074);
• Weyland is a name chosen by my Jewish ancestor upon his adult baptism - he was the reason I was travelling to Idstein;
• Obelode is a unique name linked to a farm at Steinhagen near Bielefeld
• From the same branch of the family tree and geographic area comes the French connection of Dopheide / d'Oppède.

Ancestors' names matching place names that I should look into include: Trimbach, Wilsberg,

three book reviews

I managed to lose track of my book reviews published in C&I, so here's three of them in a row. Chronologically backwards, because the more recent ones are more interesting than the one from March (which probably put me off blogging about it).

1)

The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability
Annette Kehnel
Profile Books 2024

Annette Kehnel, a historian specialising in Medieval finance, describes various areas where Medieval Europe had sustainable economic solutions, many of which were later replaced with something allegedly more efficient, but actually less sustainable. (I read the German original which is called "Wir konnten auch anders", roughly: There was another way.)

Medieval sustainability

Chemistry & Industry Volume 89, Issue 5, May 2025, Page 31

access via:

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

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

2)

Becoming Earth
Ferris Jabr
Picador 2024

Science writer Ferris Jabr divides the Earth systems into the three realms: rock, water and air, using enlightening examples to show how each of them has been shaped by life far more than we are generally aware. Each section starts in the deep past and ends with current threats, including soil loss, plastic pollution in the oceans, and climate change. 

Build your own planet

Chemistry & Industry Volume 89, Issue 4, April 2025, Page 33

access via:

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

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

3)

Natural biopolymers in drug delivery and tissue engineering
Rangasamy Jayakumar and Vishnu Priya Murali, eds.
Elsevier 2024

This hefty monograph offers an overview of where that medically-motivated use of biopolymers has led. It consists of two separate sections, with nearly 400 pages dedicated to the use of biopolymers in drug delivery, and then 250 on their use in tissue engineering. The editors have helpfully provided a detailed introduction for each of the two sections.

Biopolymers in medicine

Chemistry & Industry Volume 89, Issue 3, March 2025, Page 30

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 PDF files on request.

how the Sahara became a desert

The Sahara isn't exactly the place where you would want to store your DNA for a few millennia and expect it to still be readable, so it was a bit of a sensation that researchers recently published the first genome-wide analysis of 7000-year-old DNA of humans who lived there, when it wasn't a desert yet. A good excuse to look a bit more closely at the "Green Sahara" and how it became the Sahara desert we know today. It also serves as a warning, as some places are at risk of desertification due to climate change.

The resulting feature is out now:

Becoming a desert

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 10, 19 May 2025, Pages R357-R359

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.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

The Acacus Mountains in Southwest Libya, where archaeological excavations at sites such as the Takarkori Cave have revealed a rich fauna and human habitation during the African Humid Period. (Photo: Franzfoto/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).)

it's the season for naked cycling

The UK's World Naked Bike Ride season kicks off in three weeks time with the Cardiff Ride (aka DiffWNBR), so I'll compile some relevant info here. I typically get the tip-offs from this page but don't find its alphabetical order very helpful, so I am sorting everything in chronological order, as long as it can be reached from Oxford in a day trip using public transport (also including some rides abroad in places where I might be passing through by coincidence). No guarantee, obviously, do check other sources and local info.

As time passes and rides happen, I'll update the list with links to photos, press reports, and whatever I find about them. See also this flickr group covering all 2025 WNBRs globally (in theory - so far I've seen only pics from London and Brussels there).

8.6. Cardiff
14.6. London flickr group
21.6. Brussels - flickr album by Alain VDP
5.7. Brighton - flickr album by trgrimes
6.7. Eastbourne
12.7. Amsterdam
19.7. Portsmouth
27.7. second Cardiff ride
2.8. Cambridge
30.8. Bristol

The list is looking a bit thin so far, but watch this space!

Own photo taken at the 2024 London WNBR as the ride passed the Victoria Memorial shortly before reaching the endpoint at Wellington Arch. .

My list of rides I participated in:

2015 Bristol
2016 Bristol, London
2017 Bristol, Brighton
2018 London
2019 London
2023 Oxford, London (hey that's me)
2024 London (I'm here and here and here - look for the green flag)

Links lead to the specific Flickr albums. All albums are combined in this Flickr collection.

PS Elsewhere, the Fremont Solstice Parade, although not officially a WNBR, appears to have a similar vibe and some spectacular body art. Here's a flickr album with lovely pics from the 2025 event (and another one). I don't know much about it but apparently the ride is just a part of a bigger solstice event happening in Seattle.

robbed by Schinderhannes

I recently looked into the family history of the infamous robber Schinderhannes after a report that his skeleton was identified. Since then, I've retrieved a few books about the robbers from the library of our "family museum" and read most of

Schinderhannes und seine Bande
by Uwe Anhäuser
Rhein-Mosel-Verlag 2003

which throws around a lot of information in terms of names and quotes from the judicial procedures, but isn't very clearly structured. Although I haven't spotted any obvious connection with the names of the robbers (listed eg here), it occurred to me that a few of the victims and witnesses mentioned in the book could potentially be connected to my ancestry in the Hunsrück area (the ancestors of the Imig and the Kauer clans), so I went through the CV and the list of the crimes at the back of the book and wrote out the names (with place of residence) I could find. There's not much point in having a chronological order, as the whole crime spree was limited to just a few years, so I'll list victims and witnesses in alphabetical order here. NB the list of crimes is often missing first names, whereas the CV is only covering selected victims, and the spelling of names may differ between the two sources. I skipped a few where the information was too thin to be useful or victims were not from the area of interest.

André, NN, brigadier from Sobernheim (we have Andrae people as well, hailing from Gebroth, but our last male Andrae ancestor died 1765)

Andres, Franz, butcher at Kirn (must be related to the butchers family from which the founders of the local brewery emerged)

Bär, Jakob, Merxheim

Benedikt, Salomon, in Erbes-Büdesheim

Bernhard, Valentin, Waldgrehweiler

Frei, Anne Marie, hosted the robbers in Hahnenbach (where my relatives only arrived after Schinderhannes's death)

Frenger, NN, widow, Offenbach (Glan)

Geschwind, NN, Hundsbach

Gottschlick, Herz, Nahbollenbach

Horbach, NN, miller at ... Kanton Grumbach

Joel, Elias, Obermoschel

Köhler, Johann, Niederwörresbach

Kunz, Friedrich, Merxheim (we have Kunz / Kuntz people in that area too, eg Sargenroth, but much earlier, and this is a very common name, witness the idiomatic expression Hinz und Kunz, meaning just about everybody)

Levy, Samuel, Steinhardter Hof, robbed, then died of his injuries

Loeb, Mendel, murdered in 1801

Löb, Seckel, Staudernheim

Mathias, Wilhelm, butcher

Meyer, Herz, Ulmet (Glan)

Mohr, Christian, Schörner Hof (we do have lots of Mohr people in the area, but earlier, see here)

Moses, Isaak, Laufersweiler

Müller, Friedrich Gerhard, Raumbach

Nagel, NN, Bärenbach (the Schinder with whom Hannes served as apprentice and got his nickname)

Philippi, Heinrich (we have some Philippi ancestors from Heinzenbach in the Kirchberg area, the last in the line, Regina Chatherina Philippi was born in Simmern in 1782 and died there in 1851, so would have known of Schinderhannes as a contemporary)

Rauschenberger, Niklas, vagrant

Riegel, Peter, murdered in 1800 by Peter Stibitz, whose name is immortalised in the verb stibitzen, for "to steal"

Scherer, Johann Georg, Kirn, allegedly tried to get Schinderhannes poisoned

Schmitt, Johann, Spall

Sender, Isac, Weierbach

Schowalter, Jakob, Montforter Hof

Schweig, Niklas, Hirschstein

Schweizer, NN, Rehborn

Seligmann, Simon, murdered in 1798

Stumm cloth manufacturer at Birkenfeld

Stumm, Friedrich Philipp, Asbacherhütte (steel works on the river Fischbach)

Wiener, Wolf, Hottenbach

Zerfass, Johann Adam

Zerfas, Anne Marie, widow at Heinzenberg

Zürcher, Heinrich, Lettweiler

life story of a stradivarius violin

Düsseldorf's street libraries never fail to provide me with amazing books I never knew of, so this week I discovered, among other things:

Die Meistergeige (the master violin)
Hans Werder
Otto Janke Verlag 1914

First, it turns out that the male pseudonym hides a female author I never heard of, Anna von Bonin (1856-1933). Although successful in her lifetime, her works fell into oblivion after 1945. You can see why, as the pathos overload typical of the Romantic period doesn't quite fit the reading habits of our times. If you can look past that, however, here is a rather interesting novel, representing the complete life story of a stradivarius violin, some real historic musicians as well as fictional ones.

As the book doesn't provide any years or biographical data, I'll try to conjure up a chronology by listing the owners/players of the violin and including historic events mentioned.

Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), obviously, made the violin, and sold it to:

Lorenzo de Medici allegedly the nephew of Cosimo (III) de Medici (1642-1723), Arch Duke of Tuscany, for whom Stradivari had made a violin before (so we're looking at a period when the luthier was already quite famous, maybe around 1700?). I still think this Lorenzo may be fictional though (seeing that Cosimo III appears to have had a sister but no brothers, so any nephew would have had a different surname). Corelli (1653-1713) is mentioned as his teacher and inspiration. After dramatic events involving a love triangle as well as a vision of the violin being played by a dead man, he sold it to an

unnamed musician who took it to the Franciscan friary of Assisi and died there, leaving it to

the prior of said monastery who gave it to

Guiseppe Tartini (1692-1770) when he sought refuge there in 1710-1713 and studied with Padre Boemo (aka Czech organist and composer Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský, 1684-1742). The author makes it explicit in a footnote that all biographical details of Tartini are historic. His baroque colleague Veracini (1690-1768) makes a brief appearance in 1716, as does the devil whom he credits for a sonata he wrote. Tartini left the violin to

Rinaldo Nazari, allegedly a pupil of his but probably fictional? After being saved from an untimely death by a pirate's daughter, Nazari took the violin to Germany and left it to

a woman who looked after him until he died. She later gave it to

Sdenek, a travelling gipsy musician (Zdenek being a Czech name, related to Zdeňka as in Zdeňka Černý), who reluctantly sold it to

the Earl of Konsbruch (fictional? although there was a Konsbruch branch in the descendance of the Goltz family), who left it to his nephew

Roderich who suffered injuries at the battles of Jena (1806) and Leipzig (1813). A young Paganini (1782-1840) also got to try out our violin in this chapter. After Roderich's death it was neglected for decades and eventually came down to his grandson:

Roderich the younger who wasn't a musician and died at the battle of Mars la Tour (1870), leaving it to his musically inclined cousin

Isabella who later gave it to

Harald Eginhardt, a celebrated soloist, who liked his Wagner. He took the stradivarius to the great concert halls and (spoiler alert) the violin died with him.

As for the violin itself, we have to assume it is fictional, as so many of its alleged owners are. While Tartini is known to have owned several stradivariuses, I don't think any of them could be made to fit this story. Although the author describes a specific decorative element, so maybe she had a specific instrument in mind?

So, across two centuries, this makes a dozen owners and eight players, with some having more soul in their playing than others, as the author discusses at length. It is fortunate that this was written before global fame catapulted Stradivari's instruments into the realm of investment bankers and safe vaults, from where only the more fortunate ones escape to play with globally celebrated stars.

The more down-to-earth stories appearing in this novel, with periods of neglect, danger, and a whole spectrum of musical talents are more like the life stories that some of the 19th century German violins that are still among us might also have witnessed. Only, without a famous name, nobody bothers to write them up (or imagine them).

Photo of my very lovely copy. (own photo)

Copies are available to buy here, very cheap too.

I am now making sure I systematically use the tag antiquarian for all books I review after I found them at street libraries. May have to think of a more specific tag later, but for now this will do.

the trouble with butterflies

Everybody loves butterflies, and they are easy to spot and identify, so we have mountains of citizen science data on their distribution and population trends. Which is good and useful, and a good indicator of ecosystem health or otherwise. The only trouble is that we don't know nearly enough about most other insect species. Thus, as we see butterflies declining, as we do now according to several recent studies, we should fear that the less popular and less well observed insects may also be in difficulties, and that may threaten the survival of many other species and entire ecosystems.

While some may consider butterflies as merely decorative, their demise should really worry us more than it does. More about all this in my latest feature which is out now:

Butterfly warnings

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 9, 5 May 2025, Pages R315-R317

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.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

A pair of dorcas copper butterflies (Lycaena dorcas), one of the North American species for which population trends were established in a recent study. (Photo: © David Pavlik, Michigan State University.)

amphibians feel the heat

From the apocryphal story of frogs being boiled alive in gradually warming water to the construction of frog saunas against chytrid disease, everything you always wanted to know about amphibians and climate change is in my latest feature which is out now:

Amphibians feel the heat

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 8, 21 April 2025, Pages R273-R275

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.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

The pickerel frog (Lithobates palustris) is not endangered yet but appears in recent research as one of the species that may suffer from further climate warming. (Photo: Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)

eight women

Some thoughts on

Sounds and sweet airs: the forgotten women of classical music
Anna Beer
One World 2017

In recent years I have been learning about some amazing composers who had fallen into oblivion because they happened to be women and didn't fit the composer cliche modelled on the male genius. In my orchestral adventures, I've enjoyed playing Louise Farrenc's third symphony and Emilie Mayer's overture, as well as Amy Beach's Maria Stuart. I'm hoping to learn chamber music pieces by Rebecca Clarke and by Rita Strohl one day. And have read about the life of Clara Schumann (Dieter Kühn's slightly novelised biography), as well as about those of Rebeccs Clarke, Ethel Smyth, Dorothy Howell, Doreen Carwithen in Leah Broad's recent book Quartet. Come to think of it, I even have a youtube playlist with works by some of these.

Adding to that, I now learned about a few composers I wasn't aware of from Anna Beer's book, namely
Francesca Caccini (born 1587),
Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677),
Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729),
Marianna Martines (1744-1812),
Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994)
who are featured along with the more widely known (at least to me)
Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn) (1805-1847),
Clara Schumann (1819-1896) and
Lili Boulanger (1893-1918).

The book is a chronological array of the eight short biographies, each around 40 pages long. I love the way these eight lives cover the four centuries from 1587 to 1994 almost seamlessly - there is only a small gap between 1729 and 1744. (A graphic timeline would be a helpful addition to the book, which doesn't even list the birth and death years, I had to look them up and have now scribbled them into the table of contents with a pencil.) It is fascinating how the challenges that female composers faced over the centuries mutated and evolved over the centuries. Notably, in the early parts of the book, things seem to be getting worse for women from the Renaissance to the Classical period, as 19th century notions of gender roles came up with additional barriers that didn't exist before.

In most cases, the chapters are based on existing full-length biographies, so people who have read those may not learn anything new except perhaps the chance to find out about contradicting claims from competing biographers, which exist in the cases of some of the more colourful lives, where a fair number of unresolved paternity cases are up for debate.

While I appreciate the book for the considerable additions to my musical knowledge I have gained, I would advise readers to mistrust all quotes translated from German or French - they often appear to be subtly wrong. The consistent misspelling of the name of Friedrich Wieck (Clara Schumann's father) is a further warning that some things may have been lost in translation here.

Looking up the book online I see it has been stickered as a "companion to the Classic FM series" which makes sense in terms of the format of the eight chapters - I expect they must each have been made into a one hour or so radio piece.

I've now added some of my new discoveries to my youtube playlist:

• Caccini: Altri gelati
• Jacquet de La Guerre, Violin sonata n.1 d moll,
• Martines - Overture ("Sinfonia") in C Major - sounds lovely and very Viennese.
• Maconchy, string quartet No. 1 - probably too hard for amateurs?
• Maconchy, The sofa (opening scene of her erotic opera)

PS Shoutout also to the tumblr blog Lesser Known Composers, which features quite a few women as well (I'm no longer on tumblr, but the blog appears to be freely visible without a login.) Just yesterday, it presented the works of Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-1940) such as the Piano Concerto in D Minor, Op. 7.

Update 29.5.2025: From the always interesting Zeitzeichen podcast of the German radio station WDR, I discovered Pauline Viardot. She wrote no symphonies or quartets, sadly, but quite a few operas.