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Sir David Willcocks (1919-2015): an inspirational life remembered

Sir David Willcocks sadly passed away in September 2015. This is OUP’s tribute to a highly gifted musician and outstanding choral director whose leadership, decency, and humanity have inspired countless singers and conductors to try to follow his example.

In the early 2000s, William Owen began an oral history project which he ‘intended as a fair and honest testament of David’s life’. We have chosen edited extracts from transcriptions of William Owen’s conversations with Sir David and some by people who knew him. A copy of the final tapes and transcripts reside in the Yale oral history archive. The material is open, by permission, to scholars and students on both sides of the Atlantic.

John Rutter CBE was a student at Clare College, Cambridge during Sir David’s tenure at King’s College, Cambridge, and was co-editor with Sir David of Volumes of Carols for Choirs.

“I first met David through his music and his music-making, and I think the year must have been 1961, which was just after the first volume of the series had been published. I remember the scene vividly. I was in a Presbyterian church in Kensington, where my school friend John Tavener was the organist. He rushed in one evening and he had a green book in his hand. He said, ‘Just listen to this’, and he played the Willcocks descant to ‘O come, all ye faithful’. Then I felt, as I still feel today, that it lights up the sky, just like the best descants should do and, of course, not so many descants really do. I thought this was just an extraordinary piece of writing that transformed a classic hymn into something more splendid and more inspiring than I could have imagined.”

Sir David Wilcocks by Maggie Heywood. Do not use without permission.

Bob Chilcott was a chorister and choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge with Sir David, and also a student at the Royal College of Music during Sir David’s tenure.

“We all adored David Willcocks. He had a tremendous gift with boys. He was very tough, actually. He wouldn’t let you get away with anything, but he did it in a way that never discouraged. David was a man with a passion for doing it right. He could be so marvellously silly and open. We rehearsed in a classroom—you would have the piano facing out into a horseshoe of tables, and on either side of David was a junior boy, and then a senior boy behind, one each side. The junior boy in front would have to turn the pages, and if he got it wrong David would cajole or scold him, but in an encouraging way. It was a very good way of monitoring what was going on; he let the older boys lead, so he gave them their wings. On the rare occasions he was late, we were absolutely thrilled. We’d be playing football out on the front field, waiting for him. He would come on his bike and he’d put the bike down and join in. That was a spontaneous thing that made us realize he was always on our side. It was marvellous, but the trouble was, as you know, he was a fine sportsman: he could outrun you, he could outskill you, everything . . . We were massively influenced. There was no going back, because he’d shown us a glimpse of something which was new and so exciting. We were shown the beauty of what we could do. I was lucky—I sang the ‘Once in royal David’s city’ for three years running.”

Robert Tear was a choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge when Sir David returned to King’s in 1957, and continued to sing with Sir David professionally.

He’s got fantastic charisma with all choirs. He once said to all the women in The Bach Choir, ‘How many of you think I am looking at you individually?’ and about two hundred people put their hands up! King’s was a much more sort of tight professional outfit. If we made a mistake in the rehearsal before service, we would have to raise our hands, and if we made a mistake in the service we would have to queue up under the organ screen to say, ‘Sorry’ personally, even though he may not have heard it. It was a military exercise! But without David my career, should I have had one, would have been totally and utterly different. I learned how to be a musician with him. He was the absolutely seminal influence in my life

Roy Goodman has recently retired from an international conducting career.

“David was the conductor of the London Bach Choir and they had been approached by Decca Records in 1969. Much to our amazement and amusement, David told us that the choir had been invited to sing on a recording with the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger! I expect in those days there were quite a lot of bowler-hatted members of The Bach Choir, carrying their rolled-up umbrellas and briefcases and looking very much like city gents, with their wives or ladies in the choir. In the studio they had learned to sing a backing track for ‘You can’t always get what you want’ . . . As you can imagine, they sang it very properly and precisely: ‘You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need’ . . . But the amusing part of all this may seem hard to believe—as David began to embark on an extraordinary impression of Mick Jagger! Obviously Jagger had heard the choir warming up in the studio, singing their opening passage for the backing track, and he was not so impressed by their pronunciation. There was no way he was going to have a posh ‘You can’t always get what you want’—he wanted something more like ‘Yer kannt always git wot yer whannt’. So, there was David clicking his thumb and second finger with both hands and jiving around his room quite like a youngster, giving us his vivid imitation of Mick Jagger! It was a wonderful moment enjoyed by a roomful of sherry-drinking friends and it certainly showed off a very human side of David.”

Kings College Chapel in the snow by © Rob_ Ellis, via iStock.

Sir David remembers the first descants, and the birth of Carols for Choirs.

“My first carol service as Director of King’s College was in 1958. Now for that service, I thought how dull it is always to have the hymns just sung in unison. I thought I would like to add one or two new descants and arrangements . . . There were no descants that I knew of for ‘O come, all ye faithful’ or ‘Hark! the herald-angels sing’. I also thought we must have something simple for children listening at home, so I also inserted a very simple little setting of ‘Away in a manger’. We thought of the audience at home putting up the holly. The carol service was broadcast as usual, and a lot of people afterwards wrote to say how much they had enjoyed the descants. Well, somebody from Oxford University Press heard these and asked if they could have the three carols. I had never had anything published before, but I thought, ‘Let them have it’. They sold very well, so they then asked me if I would do a book of fifty carols. I said that I couldn’t do fifty on my own, but they wanted fifty, so I said that I would do it if somebody else did twenty-five. They suggested Reginald Jacques, who was the conductor of The Bach Choir.

Oxford felt that he could arrange some that were suitable for big choirs, and I could do some for small choirs. I met him and liked him very much. At that stage I never dreamt I was going to succeed him as Musical Director of The Bach Choir . . . The book was eventually called Carols for Choirs. It was so successful that ten years later Oxford University Press said that they would like another fifty. By that time Reginald Jacques had died. I again said that I couldn’t do more than twenty-five. They asked me, ‘Who should we have for the other twenty-five?’ I said, ‘I know an undergraduate here at Cambridge who is the most gifted composer that I’ve seen pass through the university. He is not only very able but quick, neat, and you won’t find any mistakes at all in his manuscripts.’ They said, ‘We don’t know him at all.’ I said, ‘Believe me, you will know him because he is very, very gifted . . . That was the beginning of a friendship with John Rutter that I have enjoyed for very many years.”

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Addressing the elephant in the room: Suicide awareness and prevention [infographic]

Every year in the United States, over 40,000 individuals take their own lives, making suicide the tenth most common cause of death in the country. September, National Suicide Prevention Month, seeks to raise awareness of this problem and—most importantly—help those who might be affected. While suicide is an important public health issue, it is still a taboo subject for many people. The infographic below presents some important statistics about suicide in the United States, as well as key risk factors and information about how suicide can best be prevented.

Download the infographic in pdf or jpg.

Image Credit: “Candles” by L.C. Nøttaasen. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.

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Top ten facts about Buddhism

Damien Keown, author of Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, tells us ten things we need to know about Buddhism. From the Sangha to reincarnation, discover fascinating facts about Buddhism below:

The term ‘Buddhism’ was coined by Western scholars in the 1830s. Buddhists don’t actually refer to their religion as “Buddhism”.
Buddhism originated from around 400BC with the historical individual known as the Buddha.
The first mention of the Buddha in Western writing is in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, 2 AD.
The Buddha founded an order of monks and nuns known as the Sangha who have preserved his teachings down to the present day.
Buddhism is an extensive and internally diverse tradition with two main branches.
With 360 million followers, Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in the world.
In Buddhism, there is no single holy book. Extensive scriptures have been preserved in many Asian languages.
Buddhists don’t believe in a supreme being or creator god.
Because of its emphasis on meditation and mindfulness, Buddhism is often considered to be a form of psychology rather than a religion.
Many traditional Buddhists believe in reincarnation and rebirth. Modern Buddhists believe this idea can be jettisoned without losing any central value.

Featured image credit: “Buddha”, by Alexis. Public domain via Pixabay.

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James Baldwin and The Fire This Time

As the fires burned in Baltimore, following the arrest and subsequent death of Freddie Gray in April 2015, protesters brandished placards with quotations from James Baldwin’s work, and thousands of blogs and Twitter feeds invoked the legendary writer. Although he is frequently compared to his contemporaries, Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright, it is Baldwin’s writing—forged in the crucible of the civil rights movement fifty years ago—which still speaks to and about the complexities of racial America with incomparable eloquence, insight, and moral rectitude.

Despite his insistence that he was a writer, not a civil rights leader, Baldwin’s publications, including The Fire Next Time, probed the labyrinthine moral complexities of “the white problem.” For many people in the 1960s, Baldwin was the voice of the civil rights movement. And yet he came under attack, not only from white liberals, but from young African American radicals such as Eldridge Cleaver, who dismissed the older writer, largely on account of his sexuality. In some circles Baldwin became known as “Martin Luther Queen.”

In the wake of rioting and civil unrest following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, Baldwin was interviewed by Esquire. Baldwin, who spent his career dismantling classifications such as gay and straight, white and black, objected to the term “looters.” More pertinent, Baldwin probed, is the question of who is really looting whom, just as he would describe the US justice system as a vast “criminal power.” Artists, he insisted, must be “disturbers of the peace,” a skill he mastered through his long career, which included taking numerous pot-shots at J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I.’s long-standing director. Hoover, Baldwin wrote, was “history’s most highly paid (and most utterly useless) voyeur,” a witty but prescient comment in light of contemporary government surveillance and global spying. Baldwin’s own F.B.I. dossier ran to nearly two thousand pages.

Although he was often depicted as an angry writer, as Maya Angelo recalls, “Jimmy [Baldwin] was not bitter,” Maya Angelou recalled. “What Jimmy was, was angry…He was angry at injustice, at ignorance, at exploitation, at stupidity, at vulgarity.” Far from bitter, Baldwin’s writing frequently confounds the reader with his insistence on love. In his most famous essay, The Fire Next Time, published in 1963 during a particularly bloody episode in the civil rights movement, Baldwin called upon “the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks” to work together, not as neighbors or comrades, but as “lovers.”

As Jessica Moulite notes, social media activists and commentators find enduring relevance in the author’s work, illustrating “how Baldwin’s words transcend time by remaining as relevant in 2014 as they were in 1963.” In recent weeks, a debate has raged over social media between the activist and academic Cornel West and author Toni Morrison. The disagreement between West and Morrison surrounds the publication of a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, a book heavily indebted to Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. While Morrison claims that Coates fills the intellectual void left by Baldwin, West has objected vociferously to such a comparison, arguing that “Baldwin’s painful self-examination led to collective action and a focus on social movements. He reveled in the examples of Medgar, Martin, Malcolm, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Angela Davis,” which he compares to Coates’s “fear-driven self-absorption.” Since his death in 1987, Baldwin’s work continues to provoke, anger, comfort, and illuminate; his voice, to quote from his short story “Sonny’s Blues,” remains for many readers, activists and commentators, “the roar rising from the void.”

Image Credit: “Baldwin with Shakespeare” by Allan Warren. CC BY SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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A history of firsts [slideshow]

We live in a globalized world, but mobility is nothing new.  Set on a huge continental stage, By Steppe, Desert and Ocean tells the story how human society evolved across the Eurasian continent from Europe to China. Covering over 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century AD, it shows how humankind first started building the globalized world we know today. In the slideshow below, take a look at some of the first developments that demonstrate the inventive and acquisitive nature of humanity.

Horses were trained to pull wheeled vehicles

The earliest horse-drawn chariots were developed around the southern Urals around 2100 BC. Image credit: Family driving to Pedruk. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons







The development of cavalry

A group of horsemen working together as a fighting unit began in the Altai-Sayan region of southern Siberia in the century or two after 1000 BC. Cavalry changed the world. It allowed the Mongols led by Chinggis Khan to bring huge tracts of Eurasia from China to the borders of Europe under the control of a single authority. Image credit: Battle between Mongols & Chinese (1211). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons .







The first use of gunpowder

Gunpowder was perfected in China during the Song dynasty. It was first used in grenades and bombs launched by catapults and featured in the equipment of Chinese military engineers employed by the Mongols in their assaults on Central Asian cities. In 1259 we hear of a Chinese gun made from a bamboo tube which fired pellets. The first mention of gunpowder in Britain was by Roger Bacon in 1267. Since Bacon was in close contact with William of Rubruck, it is not impossible that it was William who brought knowledge of gunpowder to Britain following his visit to the Mongolian capital of Karakorum, but by that time gunpowder had already been used against eastern European cities by the advancing Mongols. The Europeans learnt fast, and by the fourteenth century the advantages of gunpowder were being widely exploited by the armies of Europe. Image credit: Gunpowder. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons







The origins of food production

The origins of food production – that is, the cultivation of grain and domestication of animals to create an assured food supply – was a long drawn-out process. It began in south-western Asia (the Fertile Crescent and the flanking hills) soon after 10,000 BC and the fully Neolithic way of life was established by 6000 BC. In parallel, similar processes got under way in China, in the valleys of the Yellow River and the Yangtze, between 9000 and 8000 BC. Photograph by Barry Cunliffe. Do not use without permission.







The domestication of the horse

The domestication of the horse took place somewhere in the Pontic–Caspian steppe region in the first half of the fifth millennium BC. By the fourth millennium horse riding had begun. The close symbiotic relationship between man and horse was to have a dramatic impact on humankind. Photograph by Barry Cunliffe. Do not use without permission.







The first expansion of the Chinese

The first expansion of the Chinese into the Gansu Corridor under the Han dynasty in the second century BC opened the way for China to extend its influence into the Tarim Basin (now the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China) forging the last link in what has been called the Silk Roads – the long-distance trading network joining China to Europe. Photograph by Barry Cunliffe. Do not use without permission.

Featured image credit: Ancient Palmyra by Barry Cunliffe. Do not use without permission.

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Ten fun facts about the xylophone

You’d probably recognize the rainbow-patterned, lap-size plastic xylophone in the playroom, popular among music-minded toddlers. But what do you know about the real thing? The xylophone is a wooden percussion instrument with a range of four octaves, and can be used in a variety of musical genres.

No one really knows the xylophone’s origins. Although they are present in the traditional music of Melanesia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and more, its birthplace and date remain a mystery. In 1511, it was called “wooden clatter” and later a “straw fiddle” in Europe.
Often confused with its cousin the marimba, the xylophone has thick, hardwood bars and elicits much sharper, shorter notes, so the two instruments are often used together for a more varied tone.
Although the xylophone is often identified by its piano-esque appearance, this layout wasn’t established until the 20th century. In Eastern Europe in the 16th century, xylophone bars were laid out on straw in four rows (instead of today’s two rows), and this practice continued for over 300 years.
Think a xylophone on top of straw is odd? In East Africa, a quick, makeshift xylophone, called a “loose bar xylophone”, was placed over banana stems, and this may have actually been what inspired the straw technique. The debate continues as to which is a more efficient method.
The xylophone was an essential part of comedy duo Harrigan and Hart’s routines during the late 19th century. It was probably because of the duo’s success on Broadway that the xylophone is still a staple in American musicals today.
Although it’s an essential part of any orchestra or concert band today, it wasn’t until the 20th century that the xylophone became as important to classical music as it was to musicals. In the 1970s it even became a featured instrument in ragtime, particularly in the music of percussionist Bob Becker and his ensemble NEXUS.
In Senegal, xylophones have been used as part of initiation ceremonies, played by young girls and boys. Among other practical uses, it was also used to scare birds, monkeys, and other pests out of the gardens.
In Latin America, the xylophone is actually interchangeable with the marimba, and has been used in Guatemala since before the 17th century, when it was first documented. When Guatemalan independence was celebrated in 1821, the marimba became the national instrument.
Today’s xylophones are usually made of hardwood, but can also be constructed from other types of wood, including maple or even bamboo. However, you’re likely to get a much different sound depending on what type of wood you use.
The xylophone is often used to to effect the sound of clanking bones, making it as relevant in a Halloween movie as in jazz.

The above are only ten facts from the extensive entry in the The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Did we leave out any of your favorite facts about the xylophone?

Featured image: Xylophone. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Beyond the ‘God Wars’

For many years – running into decades, even centuries – the idea of a fundamental opposition between believers and non-believers has anchored public discussion about religion. The metaphors are of battles: these are ‘God Wars’, with ‘zealous religionists’ mounting their defences against ‘militant atheists’. We are warned about ‘aggressive secularism’, and hear fighting talk in which rival camps make their claims over the nation: some say British publics ‘don’t do God’; others say after all, ‘Britain is a Christian country’. For all these disagreements, the one thing that this discourse does seem to tell us is, when it comes to religion, Britain is a nation at civil war.

But to what extent does this image of ‘old theists’ at battle with ‘new atheists’ really reflect the realities of religion and nonreligion in Britain today? In our view, although polarized narratives do to some extent reflect real oppositions, they also emphasize differences in belief and blind us to important affinities between religious and nonreligious people and cultures.

For one, religious and nonreligious actors have shared interests and concerns. In past years, clashes around religious and Atheist student activity have made the news; meanwhile, Anna was carrying out fieldwork with members of a conservative evangelical congregation, some of whom were involved in a student mission at Durham University, while at the same time, the Humanist and Secular Society was also organizing its own mission at Durham in the form of a ‘Reason Week’. But when Anna spoke to members of the church who were involved in the Christian mission, they said that they liked the fact that Reason Week was also happening, acknowledging the similarities between how they and the Humanist society invest in and advocate for engagement – and particular forms of engagement – with religion.

“Even when religious and nonreligious people and groups do pit themselves against each other, there is common ground.”

They contrasted these ways of engagement with what they saw as a more standard student response of indifference to religion – a group that many nonreligious actors also critique and see themselves as distinct from. To that extent, these groups are bound together by their relationship with the indifferent, seen sometimes as a common enemy, sometimes merely as a matter of common concern. By the same token, active members of both religious and nonreligious groups are maligned and stereotyped in a secularist popular culture that sometimes sees itself as distant from both religious and explicitly nonreligious perspectives.

For both groups, reason and rationality are important. For the conservative evangelicals Anna worked with, a rationalist approach to faith is pervasive. The rector of one congregation she conducted fieldwork with recommended on their first meeting that she read Rodney Stark and Roger Finke’s Acts of Faith, which, in his words, ‘argues that faith is entirely rational’. At the same time, Lois and other researchers have documented the extent to which the most prominent forms of nonreligious culture are also profoundly rationalist. The New Atheism is a case in point. Here, non-theism and irreligion are matters of reason, clear-thinking – matters of what the groups themselves refer to as ‘freethought’.

For all this concern with rationality, both groups likewise benefit from emotional and ritual connections to their beliefs. With religious practice, this is well known; for the nonreligious, less so. Many nonreligious people think of themselves as fundamentally different to believers – rational, liberated from the social and cultural comforts and distortions of religion – yet they too participate in a series of existential cultures and the rituals surrounding those, and they share these with friends and families. One of the clearest example surrounds illness and bereavement – acute experiences in which alternative beliefs and communities of belief play an important role. For the nonreligious, there are an array humanist, naturalist and civil symbolic cultures to turn to, each with their distinctive stories and rituals. At such moments of existential crisis, the fact that nonreligious people, like religious people, participate in and draw from existential cultures is clear to see.

Even when religious and nonreligious people and groups do pit themselves against each other, there is common ground. In fact, one of the more intriguing – and ultimately divisive – things that those active within such religious and nonreligious groups also sometimes share is a sense of their own victimhood. This is perhaps not surprising when we consider that religious and nonreligious identities are unusually balanced in the UK, with about half claiming a denominational, typically Christian identity, and the other half identifying themselves as nonreligious.

Arguably this balanced position is also a precarious one – made the more flammable as both groups, thought of as quite dissimilar entities in many quarters, enjoy different kinds of legitimacy and illegitimacy in public life. In addition, religious and nonreligious actors are sometimes segregated, kept apart as a result of social, cultural and media environments in which one or other culture is dominant. Secular norms can also limit the extent to which people get to know about the religious and nonreligious beliefs and cultures of those we engage with every day.

This is an area in which social science stands to make an important contribution. Research that helps us attend to the everyday lives, concerns and aspirations of those implicated in the ‘God Wars’ can reorient our understanding away from straightforwardly oppositional narratives. It highlights instead the need to find better metaphors for modes of religious/nonreligious engagement, ones which account for cultural similarities, exchanges and friendships, as well as the real differences that exist.

Although the discursive strategies of particular religious and nonreligious groups can be self-conscious acts of distancing, it is also the case that these acts of ‘othering’ are haunted by a sense of – and even a desire for – the possibility of connection. If we recognize this, we soon recognize also that particular orientations towards separation or connection are shaped by other things – unequal modes of power, the visibility and invisibility of different kinds of religious and nonreligious practice, and broader cultural networks – all of which shape and are shaped by the complex textures of contemporary moral and existential terrains.

Featured image credit: Bus photo, by Dan Etherington. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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The B-word and its kin

Not too long ago, I promised to return to the origin of b-d words. Today I’ll deal with Engl. bad and its look-alikes, possibly for the last time—not because everything is now clear (nothing is clear), but because I have said all I could, and even this post originated as an answer to the remarks by our correspondents John Larsson (Denmark) and Olivier van Renswoude (the Netherlands).

Mr. Larsson asked me whether I knew the Swedish word baddare. I told him that I did, but I had been familiar only with its sense “whopper, whacker; big fellow (guy),” that is, in general “anything big.” This is a common word. The Internet also glosses baddare as “demon,” which was new to me, and I wondered how that sense developed. It would be tempting to suggest that, after all, Swedish had a cognate of Engl. bad, which produced “demon, the evil one.” However, this is almost too good to be true. More probably, “demon” is “the big one; bugaboo.” Bad, as I think, has no related forms in Scandinavian.

The question was about the origin of baddare. Elof Hellquist, our main authority on the etymology of Swedish words, identified the root of baddare with bad “bath.” This idea goes a long way back. Frederik A. Tamm died while compiling an etymological dictionary of Swedish; yet even what has been published (1905) is most useful. He thought that badda had developed a so-called expressive long consonant from d in bada “to bathe; give bath” and that badda meant “to beat forcibly” (verbs denoting a strong effort often have long consonants: it is as though the word’s form tried to mirror its meaning). In his two-volume work on the history of the Swedish vocabulary, Hellquist cited many verbs that allegedly belonged with bada ~ badda. However, none of them, except for badda, has a meaning different from that of its non-emphatic, non-expressive parent. Tamm and Hellquist pointed to the group bada på (på is a preposition for “on”). I understand that one can knock and beat on something, but where do people bathe on? No doubt, a semantic bridge between “bathe” and “beat” exists. For example, in Russian sweat baths, which are not saunas, it was and still is customary to beat the body with a bunch of leafy birch or oak twigs (search for Russian venik on the Internet). As regards this practice in Scandinavia, see below.

Bathing or battling?

In my opinion, neither Tamm nor Hellquist offered a convincing derivation of baddare. The story, as often in Scandinavian etymology, begins with the great and, in a way, unsurpassed, even if in some respects outdated, dictionary by Hjalmar Falk and Alf Torp. They distinguished bad1 and bad2 and pointed out that bad2 went back to the old word for “battle,” which turned up in my discussion of bad (Old English had beadu, and Icelandic has böð). Today, they said, bad2 is familiar only from bloodbath and its analogs in German and Scandinavian. From the Scandinavian languages Falk and Torp cited many compounds like bloodbath with the second element for “battle.” As could be expected, the two bath’s merged in speakers’ minds, and they came to believe that, as regards origins and sense, bloodbath poses no problems. Indeed, to us bloodbath, though a synonym for bloody battle or massacre, suggests the image of bathing in blood.  It is anybody’s guess whether the English adjective bad is related to the old word for “battle,” a noun that has secure cognates in Celtic. I don’t think it is and can only refer to what I said on this subject in the last post on bad. But it seems reasonable to suggest that Swedish badda and baddare trace back to the idea of battling rather than bathing.

Here I must return to Falk and Torp. They separated bad “bath” and bad “struggle, fight, battle,” but, in explaining the cause of the merger of the two words, they mentioned the great quantity of switches used in baths and cited Swedish badd “great heat” and “beating, thrashing,” Norwegian dialectal basstu “fight; beating,” Swedish bastu “beating” (its common meaning is “bath”), and a few others. It almost seems that, once they drew such a clear distinction between bad1 and bad2 and accounted for the confusion by the influence of folk etymology, they came close to merging the two words! In any case, my allusion to the Scandinavian analog of the Russian bath does not look fanciful.

Mr. Van Renswoude confirmed the reality of the Low German cognate of Engl. bad: a similar word also exists in a northern Dutch dialect. This makes Kern’s hypothesis mentioned in the same last post of the series on bad even more reliable. However, I think we should be most careful when we deal with similar words for “bull; young creature,” whether in Dutch or, as suggested by another correspondent, in Latvian. Here I should repeat my old warning. The b-d ~ b-t and b-k words form a multitude of similar nouns that are more or less the same in at least half of Eurasia. In English we have bad and bud. Both belong to a sizable group of nouns and even adjectives with the underlying meaning “swollen.” Close to them are words denoting fear (big objects look dangerous!), so that bug ~ bag ~ bog ~ big, buck, bud, and so forth intersect and sometimes almost merge. The antiquity of many of such words is doubtful, and in dealing with them it is therefore better to steer clear of Indo-European roots.

Here is a raddare indeed. But where is he now?

The same correspondent suggested that Old Saxon undarbadon “to frighten” had short a in the root, because, if the vowel had been long, the Scandinavian cognates of the Saxon verb would also have had a long vowel. In this case, Mr. Van Renswoude referred to Guus Kroonen’s 2013 Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, where we find a short entry on the reconstructed root badōjan “to frighten.” Having listed a few non-Germanic cognates, Kroonen cited Norwegian bad “effort, trouble, fear” and a related form in Danish. Part of his conclusion runs as follows: “The Norse word may have been borrowed into Middle English, so as to give rise to the hitherto unetymologized Engl. bad.” His statement concerning Old Saxon is copied from Falk-Torp, at Bad II. There it is said that undarbadon may (only may!) belong with bad “battle.” But this is merely a conjecture. Perhaps bad “battle” has nothing to do with badōjan. I suggested a different connection, which, of course, is also hypothetical. Undarbadon, as I think, has no congeners in Scandinavian. Also, Kroonen should have stayed away from Engl. bad, a word whose history, as we have seen, is obscure and may have begun in Old rather than Middle English. In using this dictionary, one should in general remember that most of Kroonen’s entries are short, that his references to the scholarly literature are of necessity few (tons have been written on the origin of every Germanic word), and that his verdicts should sometimes be taken with a grain of salt.

There is some poetic justice in the fact that the derivation of a verb meaning “frighten” remains a puzzle. Such puzzles teach etymologists humility and save from the fall. I do not plan to return to Engl. bad or Swedish baddare (unless I am made to do so by popular demand, that is, angry comments or questions), but, once I have gleaned the September field clean, I’ll again deal with the words whose root begin with b and ends with d. This field can never be harvested to the full.

Image Credit: (1)”The Homann Map of Scandinavia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the Baltics, from 1715″ by Johann Baptist Homann. (2) “Russian Venus (In Banya)” by Boris Kustodiev. (3) “David und Goliath” by Osmar Schindler. 

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Subversive voting, or how the French spoil their ballot papers

You might not guess, but the image below celebrating the Second Republic of 1848 was cast at Dijon as a negative vote in the referendum of 1851, which sought approval for the coup d’état that brought Louis-Napoleon (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) to power in France. The overwhelming majority voted positively but, among a minority of dissenters, there were those who chose to graphically illustrate their opposition. Others made adverse written comments on their papers and still more defaced the ballot they had been instructed to use by the newly installed Napoleonic authorities, or submitted blank pieces of paper to the ballot box.

Document conserved at the Archives nationales de France, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, BII 1065A, Côte-d’Or, Plébiscite de 1851. Reproduced with permission.

Ironically, it was spoiled papers that were kept to document their invalidation, while the votes that literally counted were destroyed once the election result was declared.

Now, this is not simply a matter of historical curiosity, though it is one that has rarely attracted attention, but merely one fascinating instance of a deeply ingrained tradition of electoral protest in France, which has few echoes in Britain. Indeed, spoiling the ballot paper has become more popular in recent French elections, with over 5% of votes declared null and void in the second round of presidential elections in 2002 and 2012, representing roughly two million electors. To be sure, many of these subversive votes today are blanks. In other words the envelope the French have employed since 1914 is left empty, or the ballot paper inserted into it has been cancelled out in some way, but comments continue to be added, and a small number of voters still go the trouble of composing their own paper.

Document conserved at the Archives nationales de France, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, C5217, Élections législatives, 8 May 1898, at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. Reproduced with permission.

Similar practices do exist elsewhere (and I would be delighted to hear about them), but they go back a long way in France, where voting with a ballot paper became compulsory after the Revolution of 1789. From 1848 onwards, all French adult males could vote (women had to wait another century) and they did so frequently, in both general and local elections, in huge numbers. Ironically, it was spoiled papers that were kept to document their invalidation, while the votes that literally counted were destroyed once the election result was declared. The evidence for the practice of spoiling is thus readily available in the French archives, as a typewritten example from 1898 demonstrates (above). In this instance, the author is voting for the novelist Emile Zola, who had famously declared his support for the alleged ‘traitor’, Captain Dreyfus, but he is also affirming his commitment to the Republic and Justice, while condemning parliamentary politics and the fickle nature of public opinion.

But why bother to spoil, still more to annotate or create a paper, rather than simply stay at home or ‘go fishing’, as the French expression for electoral abstention puts it? Is it another example of our noisy neighbours’ awkward behaviour, part of their vast repertoire of protest activities? Until the advent of wholly secure voting in 1914, when envelope and polling booth were introduced, defacing a paper distributed by a party agent or government official was a way of resisting such pressure. However, discussion remained closely associated with election in France until 1848, when voting in assemblies came to an end, and writing on the ballot paper was a means of perpetuating that discursive tradition. It was also a challenge to the basic choice – yes or no, or between candidates – which the simple, individual act of voting subsequently became. Finally, as the preceding annotated ballot paper suggests, it was also an affirmation of the elector’s sovereignty, at least for the duration of polling day.

Document conserved at the Archives nationales de France, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, BII 1065A, Côte-d’Or, Plébiscite de 1851, canton de Gevrey, showing an old man literally bearing a yes vote for Louis-Napoleon. Reproduced with permission.

This further, illustrated example (above) suggests there was also an element of playfulness at work, but one which often aimed to undermine the disciplined formality, even ‘sacred’ nature of the civic duty that voting was becoming as the nineteenth century wore on. Writing ‘merde’ in large letters, or adding derogatory comments about candidates, was also a means of challenging the current electoral process. It was evidently inspired by contemporary political caricature, as well as by anarchists who regarded representative democracy as a confidence trick on the people.

At a time when electoral participation is generally declining in Europe, might permission to annotate ballot papers help revive enthusiasm for voting? The French have an association for promoting recognition of the blank vote, which is equated with abstaining, though the voter has gone to the trouble of casting a ballot. Elsewhere there are demands for NOTA, ‘none of the above’, as an option on the paper (or, in many cases today on the electronic screen, which renders any written protest impossible) to cater for those who feel their choice at the polls is too limited. Should room be provided to nominate additional candidates,a facility offered by some states in the USA, or to register a protest about a particular issue? Not surprisingly, the political class are reluctant to offer such latitude, but it is surely more democratic to create a space for dissent rather than experience rising abstention. If people feel disenfranchised by the options presented to them, surely they should be given this means of expression?

Header image: D’Allonville’s cavalry in the street of Paris during Napoleon III’s coup. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Simplicity in a complex world

There is a polarization in management and policy thinking.

On the one hand, there is an increasing focus, for organizations, on defining detailed rules, standardizing methods, evidencing and measuring outcomes. The intention is to make the hospital, school, or firm work as an efficient, optimized, well-oiled machine. The belief is that if we tell people exactly what to do and check they do it exactly, then standards and efficiency will improve.

On the other hand, in the field of economics, there is almost the opposite – increasing deregulation and laissez-faire driven by a strong belief in the invisible hand of the market and in the power of competition to lead to optimal outcomes. And, although not necessarily obvious, in the field of economics too is the implicit assumption that, statistically, the future can be predicted, that policies can be designed and optimized. This unregulated economic world is still modelled as if it worked predictably and controllably, moving inexorably towards equilibrium.

What is remarkable is that these beliefs seem to harden and become evermore entrenched despite the repeating crises facing our economies, ecologies, and societies. They persist in spite of the stark and sometimes completely unexpected social eruptions and political crises that dominate the news. If ever there were a need for fresh thinking we are seeing it now. Yet most of the solutions that are attempted consist in propping up the status quo, doing more of the same, just trying harder—rather than thinking afresh and questioning underlying assumptions.

Umeda Crossing by Strevo. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr.

What is less obvious perhaps, is that each approach gains its legitimacy from theories of physics – Newtonian, machine thinking leading to a plan-do-review method for management and thermodymanics leading to a ‘free market’ approach for economists. The question of the validity of attributing such scientific theories to the social world has long been questioned. In a world that is increasing complex, turbulent and global, do we need to seek new paradigms and perspectives?

Complexity theory is the theory of open systems; open systems, like organisations or economies, how they interact and are affected by the wider world. Traditional physics theories, in contrast, gain their tractability through acting as if they are closed and self-contained. Complexity gives us a different approach to engaging with the world – a middle ground between control and chaos. It advocates more tentativeness and less hubris. It suggests ‘try it and see’ or ‘try several things and see’ rather than ‘the analysis of the situation shows this is the right way to tackle it’. It implies that, whilst we should work as best we can to use evidence and information to inform our decisions, sometimes the information which captures the past quite well is of limited use in illuminating the future.

Complexity theory tells us we need to be wary of assuming everything can be tested and evidenced, and imagining that we can always know what caused what or what might happen next. We need to be more willing to experiment, to fail, and to learn from those failures—without giving up on clarity, and without abandoning the use of concrete data to plan and measure within limits.

What is easy to miss in saying all this is that embracing complexity can actually makes things easier, simpler, and more straightforward. How much time gets spent by organizations making cases, forming detailed plans, completing analyses, and demonstrating outcomes? How much of this really gets to the heart of the situation and really determines either what to do or what has been done? Perhaps less planning but more experimentation would be not only more effective but also simpler. Perhaps more focus on the initial selecting of good professionals, allowing them more autonomy to respond more effectively to the situations they are facing, would be less time consuming than the considerable efforts put in by managers to direct, measure, and control their performance. If the world is complex, then acting congruently with that complexity can be simpler than trying to control a machine that does not exist.

Headline image credit: 5/52 Mechanical by Jayp0d. CC-BY-NC-2.0 via Flickr.

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