An anniversary anthem – the gift of love

Posted on April 14, 2025 by Frank Norman

At the end of August 2024 I set a hare running which has just reached its destination. A brand new piece of music now exists, because I commissioned it. The process of commissioning was surprisingly straightforward.

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Penzance, Cornwall

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Penzance, Cornwall

I have written before about the big part that singing in choirs has played in my life – symphonic choirs, chamber choirs, church choirs. A few years ago one of my sisters, A, started singing in a choir too.  She joined a community choir and then more recently joined her local church choir in Penzance. I enjoyed hearing about her experiences, and talking to her about singing church music. I remembered that it can be difficult when you first start and she found the same, so I sympathised but told her it will get easier. A is just two years older than me, so of all my siblings she is the closest to me in age and we had many shared experiences from our early years. Now we have a new shared experience.

Commissions

An anthem is a short piece of devotional music performed in church. Sometimes they are called motets, if the words are Latin rather than English. Anthems are sometimes commissioned for particular occasions or places. I’ve often noticed the dedications on anthems giving the details of why they were commissioned.

One famous commissioner was Walter Hussey, a clergyman and lover of the arts. He was vicar of St Matthew’s church, Northampton for 18 years and then Dean of Chichester Cathedral for a further 22 years. In both places he commissioned many pieces of music. The anthem Rejoice in the Lamb by Benjamin Britten was written for the 50th anniversary of St Matthew’s church. Hussey also commissioned Lo, the full, final sacrifice from Gerald Finzi (1946). At Chichester Hussey’s most well-known commissions were Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and the 1975 Chichester Service by William Walton.

Benjamin Britten wrote many commissions – his Antiphon was written for the 30th anniversary of St Michael’s Tenbury and his Wedding Anthem was composed for the marriage of the Earl of Harewood and Marion Stein.

William Matthias’ anthem Let the people praise thee, O God was composed for an even grander wedding – that of (then) Prince Charles and Diana Spencer. The choirmaster of a choir I once sang in wrote an anthem for two members of the choir who got married, a setting of O Perfect Love. We sang it at their wedding.

A golden wedding

When I realised last year that my sister A’s golden wedding anniversary was coming up in 2025, an idea started hatching in my head. I subtly enquired whether she was planning to have some sort of party. They had thrown a party for their ruby anniversary, and for their thirtieth anniversary they’d made a renewal of vows in their church in Penzance. My sister said that they were indeed planning a party.

I mulled over the idea of commissioning of an anthem to mark their golden wedding, like those I’d observed. I contacted the choir director at my sister’s church, and ran the idea past him. He was positive about the idea, though was concerned that the new piece should be appropriate to the choral forces available.

Composer’s Edition

I knew nothing about commissioning music, so I wasn’t sure where to start. In March 2024 I had attended a Making Music webinar on sourcing music and I remember hearing Dan Goren talk about Composers’ Edition (CE), a contemporary music publisher that he founded. Among other things Dan said that CE aimed to make it easy for choirs and orchestras to commission new music, so I looked further at them. I put an enquiry into their website describing my plans and soon after that Dan himself called me to discuss the potential commission. He explained the process and asked a few questions about what I wanted. Dan said he would send details of my proposed commission to all the composers on the CE list, to solicit ‘bids’ from them.

I was excited about the idea and put out a post on Bluesky:

Just had a call with someone from Composers' Edition, about my plan to commission a short choral anthem to celebrate my sister's golden wedding. This is a new thing for me – looking forward to the next step, when I will hear from some composers.

— Frank Norman (@franknorman.bsky.social) 2024-09-04T09:24:32.800Z

A few weeks later I had responses from eight composers, with varying backgrounds. I considered all of them, looking at the composers’ experience of choral and church music in particular, and listening to recordings of some of their music via the CE website. It was a bit like sifting through job applicants. Some of the composers addressed the points I’d made in my proposal, some ignored my proposal and just wrote about the music they would like to create.

After much cogitation I settled on Liz Lane. She has written church music previously and has a style that is very approachable. We had some email correspondence and then a Zoom call, during which I was able to fill in a bit more background about myself and A and the reason for the commission.

Realism

I had heard my sister’s Penzance church choir sing a few years earlier and they seemed very competent, singing a wide range of music. However lockdown had a negative impact on many choirs, and this one has shrunk in size to between 6 and 9 singers.

My own regular church choir has shrunk too and now typically has between 6 and 12 members on a Sunday morning so I’m very familiar with the challenges. We make regular use of OUP’s Easy and Flexible Anthems collection and the Novello Short Anthems collection. I think many church choirs will be in a similar position.

When talking to Liz Lane I mentioned the need for flexibility, referring to the examples of collections like these two. While a large-scale anthem for many singers would have been lovely, I wanted my commission to be performable by more meagre forces – a modest number of voices plus keyboard accompaniment.

I also passed on to Liz the comments that the Penzance choir’s director had made about the need for the new piece to be readily singable, not excessively discordant, and straightforward to learn.

I put some more Bluesky posts out.

I've had some proposals through & have chosen a composer. We had a good chat over Zoom yesterday and made good progress. I think she will do a great job. She asked whether the church choir has any instruments other than organ available. I said no, but now I wish I'd said 'onde martenot and tamtam'.

— Frank Norman (@franknorman.bsky.social) 2024-10-08T09:24:10.072Z

(This morning I've been listening to Messiaen's Trois Petites Liturgies, but you probably guessed that!).

— Frank Norman (@franknorman.bsky.social) 2024-10-08T09:25:08.508Z

 

Text

The next challenge was to choose a text to be set. I wanted it to be clearly suitable for religious use, but not overly ‘holy’ if you know what I mean. It should be a celebration of enduring human love. Consulting with friends who knew much about liturgical music they advised that I could consider choosing a poem, or a Biblical text. I liked the famous words from 1 Corinthians 13, and also the words of the hymn ‘O Perfect Love’ seemed appropriate. I looked at a few psalms, but they didn’t seem to fit the bill.

Liz told me that she had previously set texts by the poet Jennifer Henderson. Jennifer kindly drafted an original poem for consideration, called Joyful Promise. I liked it, but again it didn’t feel right for the anthem I had in mind. Eventually we settled on the Corinthians text and I chose some of the lines that I wanted to be included, leaving it to Liz whether she included additional lines. This is the final text that Liz set:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love never fails.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love

Confirmation and composition

In late November Composers’ Edition drafted a contract and Liz and I both signed it, so we were legally committed to the project. I paid Liz the first instalment of the commissioning fee. CE kept in touch periodically, checking that things were proceeding OK.

My sister already knew that I had been in touch with her church choir’s director, but she didn’t know the reason. Now that everything was confirmed I told her what was going on, resolving the mystery. I think she liked the idea of the commission.

As luck would have it I visited Bristol in December and was able to meet up with Liz as she teaches at UWE and lives in the area. We met over a cup of coffee at St George’s Brandon Hill and had a good chat.

In late January Liz sent a draft score of the new piece. I sang through it and found it very tuneful. I don’t have the ability to imagine how the whole score sounds just by looking at it, so I couldn’t judge what the complete effect would be but it looked good.

I sent the draft score to my sister’s church choir director for him to review. He and Liz had some conversations about a few points. Soon the final version was agreed and everyone was happy with it.

Production and performance

Liz sent me a selection of possible cover images and I chose one. We agreed on the precise wording that would appear on the score, to describe the commissioning and the occasion. Jennifer also kindly agreed to allow her poem to be printed in the score booklet.

Cover of the new anthem, The Gift of Love, by Liz Lane

Cover of the new anthem, The Gift of Love, by Liz Lane

The anthem was printed by Composers Edition and a set of copies was sent to A. The choir started to rehearse the music and they liked it. They put in a good deal of work to learn it ready for my sister’s wedding anniversary in April.

The score is very well produced – the printing is clear and legible and it is a good size. The setting is SATB with an optional descant and an optional congregational part. The choir sing sometimes in unison, sometimes in four parts. The main theme comes round several times, so you become familiar with it. It is written to be singable. The accompaniment can be played on piano or organ. It moves at some pace, and is about 3 mins 30 secs long.

The church choir generously allowed me to sing with them for the first performance.  I travelled down to Penzance midweek and joined them for their Wednesday evening rehearsal, then sang with them at the main morning mass on Sunday 6 April. The Gift of Love was sung as the communion anthem that day.  At the end of the service the golden wedding couple were given a blessing by the parish priest.  Their four children were in the church to witness this and to hear the new anthem. My sister told me later that people in the congregation had been moved by the singing of the new anthem.

I liked the title which Liz chose – The Gift of Love. This struck me as very apt. The anthem is about love, 50 years’ worth of love, which is a great gift. The anthem itself is also a gift, from me to A and her husband, in recognition of my love for them.

I hope that other church choirs will want to sing this new piece. I have bought a set for the church choir I sing with regularly and I hope we can schedule it in a service when appropriate.  If you know of a wedding anniversary (or even a wedding) coming up then it would be a good choice.

Thanks to everyone involved – Composers Edition, Liz Lane, the choir and their director in Penzance, the organist, and of course my sister and her husband for showing us what a gift love is.

Posted in Family, Music | Leave a comment

A new development in scientific integrity

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Frank Norman

This is a 1st April post, I won’t call it April Fool’s as there’s only one set of fools mentioned here. Rest assured that CrapMed does not (yet) exist.
———————————-
Recent changes in US scientific research are very worrying. The ‘anti-science movement’ is being spearheaded by Robert F Kennedy – a leading figure of the modern anti-vaccine movement for many years. On their own his views are nothing new – the Skeptics in the Pub movement was spawned in 1999 to act as a corrective to science denialism. I remember that homeopathy attracted much criticism from the science community at that time, such as this 2002 systematic review by Edzard Ernst. The difference now is that Kennedy is in charge of the USA’s leading biomedical agencies – NIH, FDA, CDC – so is likely to do real damage.

There is great concern too about political interference in NIH funding.  Trump appointees will screen new funding proposals “to ensure the research that will be funded aligns with the priorities of President Donald Trump’s administration”. A recent article in the EHN Newsletter says:

Political interference in federal research funding compromises scientific integrity. It could skew national health priorities, delay urgent studies, and have a chilling effect on research related to topics like racial health disparities and vaccine confidence.

In another very worrying move the NIH’s Scientific Integrity Policy has been rescinded.

Will these worrying developments lead to an increase in the quantity of unreliable research results in the published literature? How can we detect research that has been compropmised?

A new information tool is launching today, 1st April, to help sort genuine science from fake science. CrapMed is an index of dodgy science. It contains 1) articles published in journals with suspect peer review, and 2) articles reporting research that has been compromised by political interference.

There are plans to rapidly scale-up the service as there is expected to be a huge growth in this sector (mis-research) over the next four years.

A team of scientific integrity experts has been assembled and many contributors in the broader community have volunteered to help to monitor the literature to identify candidate articles. Developers are also building links to Xitter, another rich source of mis-information.

Commenters have suggested that CrapMed could serve a useful purpose by identifying research that no-one should take seriously. By subtracting the results of a CrapMed search from the results of a PubMed search genuine investigators can derive a set of results that is free from compromised or fake research results.

CrapMed leaders are also negotiating with CrossRef to ingest the Retraction Watch database of retracted articles.

Noted researcher Lunchtime O’Gilson said that ’CrapMed is the highest quality database of utter dross that I have ever seen’.

Initially the focus is on biomedical crap, but observers suggest that it will soon be necessary to expand to cover all branches of research. The Web of Crap is likely to be needed before the end of 2025.

Plans are also under way for a new bibliometric indicator based on CrapMed. The working name for this indicator is the ‘Crap-Index’ but there are worries that this name is not sufficiently descriptive – there are so many other bibliometric indicators that people think are crap.

Stop Press

Rumours emerging from the Department of Ghastly Egregiousness suggests that the NLM will be renamed as the National Library of Misinformation and will divert resources from PubMed to maintaining CrapMed.

Posted in Research tools, Searching | Comments Off on A new development in scientific integrity

My lovely sister, 1946-2025

Posted on March 27, 2025 by Frank Norman

This week my much-loved eldest sister, M, died. I want to share with you some memories of her through my life.

In a few weeks it will be 30 years since my mother died from cancer. It was a difficult time – the uncertainty of waiting for test results, the assaults of chemo and surgeries, the time for recuperation. M had trained and practiced as a nurse so she made it her job to see that my mother received the best care. M navigated through all the healthcare decisions, keeping the rest of the family in the loop and explaining every stage. When my mother needed to recuperate for a bit before returning home, M made space in her own home and looked after her.

I was reminded of that time this week. M’s caring and dedication, her clear idea of what had to be done and her willingness to step in. Giving of herself. Now she was the one who needed all our love and care.

Growing up, we were a family of six children. I was the youngest. One sister died in a plane crash 40 years ago, leaving M as the oldest. We were a close family, though as we scattered across the UK we saw each other less frequently. The bonds remained strong.

When M left home to train as a nurse I was still a small child, so I don’t have strong memories of her until later. When she married I was 12 years old. I had my first taste of champagne at the wedding. (I don’t remember but apparently I enjoyed it!). That was the start of a long and happy marriage. A few years later she accompanied her husband when he moved to work in (pre-Ayatollah) Iran for six months and later they lived in Jamaica for a spell. I remember feeling very sad when she went away the first time, as it seemed such a far-off place.

Back in London they lived in a flat in Notting Hill and I remember as a teenager making trips to visit her in school holidays. M was beautiful and stylish as well as loving. She took me to visit smart department stores like Biba’s, Whiteleys, Barkers and other swell places. I remember on one of those trips watching her cooking in the flat – she was making a curry by mixing different spices rather than by spooning out ready-made curry powder. I was amazed to discover all the individual spices that went into it – their smells and colours. I think that set off my own love of cooking with spices. She was a great cook and her meals were always great treats.

I had many happy times visiting M, on my own or as part of family occasions. She and her husband moved house several times – Newmarket, Stansted, Chelsea, Putney, Rye. She was a great home-maker and relished the challenge of creating a new home – reshaping the house, decorating and choosing furnishings. Her sense of style was impeccable and her homes always had her imprint. She was also skilled in many crafts, things I know little about. She took up beading, making beautiful things with tiny beads. At one point she acquired a knitting machine and used it to create amazing clothes. She made me a jumper with a musical staff on the front; on it were the notes of the first phrase of Colonel Bogey. That was my favourite jumper for many years.

In the mid-1990s I started to have more impact in my library career, and received invitations to speak at professional events. I needed to smarten up my image. M took me shopping and helped me to select a new outfit. I still have the lovely double-breasted jacket that we chose. She also suggested a colour scheme that would suit me. I often veer towards that colour palette when I buy clothes even today.

After our mother died I felt closer still to M. I was no longer her baby brother of years gone by but a middle-aged man, so we related more equally. By then she had started her own family but she always had time to listen and talk. When at a late age I came to understand that I was gay, M was the first family member who I told. She was of course lovely, encouraging and reassuring. Tears were shed on both sides. When I found love with my now-husband, M welcomed him into the family. She was one of the witnesses at our Civil Partnership ceremony.

My sister at my Civil Partnership ceremony

My sister at the Civil Partnership ceremony

M was a very good hostess. She organised family get-togethers and parties for birthdays and anniversaries, always ready to open up their house. Over the years I came to know some of her friends too, through meeting them at her parties.

A few years ago when M and her husband celebrated a major wedding anniversary with a big family lunch, I was moved to stand up and make an impromptu short speech. I’m not good at spontaneous speechifying but the urge to speak overcame any nervousness. I told them that their relationship had been a firm point for me – they were so solid all my adult life – and I thanked them for their generosity to friends and family.

The last few years were hard for M. Four or five years ago she started complaining of a sort of brain fog. Slowly her speech became more restricted. It wasn’t obvious at first but in conversation she would repeat what you said. Later she would repeat just one particular phrase in response to anything you said. Diagnosis was very slow, but eventually we learnt that this was due to Primary Progressive Aphasia, a form of dementia that affects speech especially. This robbed her of the ability to communicate.

Slowly her world shrank as she could not talk or read, then she could not cook or do her craftwork. Later on her condition affected her ability to swallow, making eating a very slow process. Life became very complicated and increasingly fragile. She was cared for at home almost the whole time of her illness, by family and excellent carers, one in particular was so devoted and caring.

I tried to visit M regularly over the last couple of years. It was hard to see her so changed but it was heartening when she recognised me and gave a smile. She was still there inside, responding to loved ones but unable to tell us what she was feeling or thinking.

Last week M caught an infection and over the weekend it became serious. She was taken to hospital. Antibiotics did not help. Her family and close friends came to be with her, and I was able to be with her too on Tuesday. Early in the following morning she passed away.

Grief comes in waves and it’s still hard to accept that M is gone. Writing this has helped me I think. I’m sure everyone who knew M will have their own memories and stories of special times with her, and times when she has helped them. M was important to all of us, inspiring love and loyalty in all who knew her.

I remember that when the Guggenheim Bilbao first opened in 1997 we talked about travelling there together to visit it. Of course M was interested and knowledgeable about art and architecture. Sadly we never did see that plan through. I think I must make that trip soon, in her memory.

Posted in Biographical, Family | 22 Comments

My favourite Christmas carol

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Frank Norman

Waiting for Christmas

Today is the first day of Advent. In Christian tradition this is a time of preparation and waiting for the arrival of the infant Jesus on Christmas Day. These days Advent is often treated as the start of the Christmas season. Traditionalists maintain that Christmas starts only on the evening of 24 December and insist that that no tree or decoration should appear before then. I’m afraid they have rather lost that battle.

In the UK you can find Christmas foodstuffs appearing in shops from October, maybe even earlier. High Streets will put up decorations in November – in London the main shopping streets started switching on their decorative lights in the first week or so of November. By the time December starts we’re on a fast slide down to 25 December and the big feast.

One group of people who always start their preparations early are those who sing in choirs.
My own church choir started planning for Christmas in October and we started rehearsing Christmas music a month ago. Secular choirs too will have made an early start. In the music library where I volunteer, all our copies of Benjamin’s Britten’s masterpiece, Ceremony of Carols, were booked out on loan by mid-August, and the majority were reserved by the end of April!

Singing at Christmas

Christmas is a season when much music will be sung. Christmas carols are hugely popular, more so probably than any other kind of church music or classical music, so there are many services and concerts of Christmas music. People who sing in choirs (like me) can experience a surfeit of Christmas music during December, singing in carol concerts, carol services and ad hoc carol performances. This can leave you jaded as you trot out Hark the Herald Angels Sing for the 19th time.

I did get a bit tired of it all a few years back and resolved to cut back on my festive singing engagements. But then I sang in a carol concert to a packed Royal Albert Hall in London and I realised what a privilege it was to entertain 5,000 people who were absolutely enthralled to be there listening to us.  It would have been churlish to be anything other than joyful.

This year I’m singing in three church carol services, a musical evening in my old workplace, and a carol concert arranged by Bristol University alumni in London. I’m also joining a group to do some carol singing on the street for one evening. Across all those I’ll be singing a mixture of old and new music, including three specially written pieces.

Program planning for Christmas is a fine skill. There is a tension between making sure that all the favourite old familiar carols are included yet providing variety and novelty for the audience (and singers). Luckily there is an enormous amount of Christmas music available and new pieces (or new arrangements of old tunes) are written every year. The highlight of many people’s Christmas is hearing the carol service from King’s College, Cambridge – a tradition that dates back to 1918. They always feature a newly commissioned piece of Christmas music in the service.

David Willcocks was director of music at King’s College for many years and he was the joint editor of Carols for Choirs (CfC), published in 1961, and its 1970 successor Carols for Choirs 2. These books contained a mixture of easily singable standard carols plus some more adventurous and challenging pieces of Christmas music. They became the go-to carol books for choirs, and were known by the colour of the covers – CfC1 was the green book and CfC2 was the orange book. It always struck me as odd that these books, the embodiment of the King’s College, Cambridge Christmas carol tradition, were published by Oxford University Press.

Cover of Carols for Choirs 3 - the blue book

Cover of Carols for Choirs 3 – the blue book

I became acquainted with the green book in the early 1970s, and I remember playing through the whole book on the piano, very badly! Later I came to know the orange book too, and carols from these two sources featured in my Christmas singing  through the mid 1970s. Then in 1978, when as a student I sang in the choir of Clifton Cathedral, a new carol book was added to the series – Carols for Choirs 3 (also known as the blue book). The choir purchased a set of copies of CfC3. The new book contained several arrangements by Willcocks and several by the other editor, John Rutter. Rutter has produced many fine carols and arrangements, to the extent that some people complain that his music is everywhere at Christmas. I enjoyed getting to know some new carols and new arrangements, to add some new spice to the Christmas repertoire.

 

 

My favourite Christmas carol

One of the first pieces we sang from the new book was the Wexford Carol – an arrangement by Rutter of an Irish traditional carol. The original melody is very beautiful and Rutter treats it sensitively. It starts with a baritone solo and I recall that our music director, Christopher (Chris) Walker, sang it. The text of the carol tells the Christmas story, and the opening words address the listeners explictly. Chris was a great communicator – he turned to the congregation and sang the opening words of the story directly to them; it came over very effectively, drawing the congregation into the story.

Good people all, this Christmas time
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son

In Rutter’s arrangement the choral parts then enter gradually, wordless and almost imperceptible at first, as the soloist continues to tell the story. Then the choir takes over the tale for a couple more verses until the soloist comes in again at the end to finish the story.

Talking about the carol

This carol became a firm favourite of mine. I was surprised and pleased last year to discover a podcast devoted to the origin of the carol. Maggi Van Dorn is a US audio producer, working ‘at the intersection of religion and culture’. She has made several podcasts delving into the background of favourite Christmas carols, under the series title Hark! The stories behind our favorite Christmas carols. The podcast about the Wexford Carol is about 45 minutes long. She also wrote an essay as a companion piece to the podcast.

The carol originates in Enniscorthy, in County Wexford, Ireland. Van Dorn travelled to that part of Ireland on holiday and while there she learnt more about the carol. It probably originated in the 15th or 16th century and was passed on in an oral tradition. It was first transcribed by Grattan Flood, an organist and a scholar of Irish music and history, in about 1920. Flood published his simple choral arrangement of the carol and it has been popular in Enniscorthy ever since. It even made its way into the 1928 edition of the Oxford Book of Carols, a popular collection of carols at that time.

It’s a great story, and Van Dorn plays the detective as she hunts down the history of this carol, interviewing various people. The podcast also features her interviewing another expert on church music, to outline the musical qualities of the carol – none other than Chris Walker! It was good to hear Chris talking about this carol, which I remember so well and which I’d learnt from him 45 years earlier.

Chris Walker was the first Director of Music at Clifton Cathedral when it opened in 1973, so he created its tradition of music. He left in 1991 after 18 years in charge of the music there and moved to the US, becoming a leading figure in US church music. He was Director of Music at St. Paul the Apostle Church, LA for 20 years up to 2021. Now he works as a composer, conductor and lecturer.

In the podcast he made some interesting observations on the Wexford (or Enniscorthy) carol. In particular he reflected on its transition from being passed on by oral tradition to being written down by Grattan Flood. When passed on orally there can be variations in the precise notes, depending on who is singing it. Transcription sets it in stone, and captures the particular inflexions of the person who sings it to the transcriber, in this case Grattan Flood on that day in 1920. That singer’s version of the tune has thus been fixed as the definitive version that we know over 100 years later.

There is quite a feast of information on the web about this carol and you can easily go down multiple rabbit holes learning more about its history and the history of Grattan Flood. The Wikipedia page gives a short summary and some jumping-off points.

Grattan Flood’s arrangement of the carol is available as a free download and I hope I can sing it one day – it’s more straightforward than the Rutter version.

If you’re interested in Christmas music and musical history I do recommend listening to the podcast.

Posted in History, Music | Tagged , , | Comments Off on My favourite Christmas carol

Bluesky again

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Frank Norman

Since my last post in September I’ve grown ever more fond of Bluesky. I look at ex-Twitter less and less. When I do go to Ex-Twitter I still see things of interest, and I retweet a few things, but I’ve not posted any original tweets there for a while.

Growth

Bluesky has grown both in the range of interesting people and posts there and in overall numbers (see this counter – it’s approaching 23mn users at the time of writing).  It feels like it’s the platform of choice for academics who want to leave Muskville. Bluesky is still developing new features, and I’m learning more about how it works.

Mainstream media have noticed its progress, and articles about Bluesky’s growth keep popping up.

Guides

Guides to migrating from Twitter and to using Bluesky are proliferating. I liked what Andy Tattersall said in this thread – he’s trying to encourage people to try Bluesky, but without badgering or guilt-tripping.

There is a guide for academics produced by Ned Potter, a librarian at York university and a couple of guides specifically for scientists, one made by Jonny Coates, preprint and research integrity advocate, and another made by academics Steve Haroz and Mark Rubin

Who to follow?

Starter packs are a feature of Bluesky that has helped its growth. These are curated lists of people/accounts. There is a starter pack for librarians that I found helpful and many more covering a wide range of topics. I also liked the Science Snark and Shitposters starter pack, highlighting posters with attitude. Most of the packs have a disciplinary focus – you can search this starter pack directory to see if there are any in your field. If you really trust the person who has curated the list then you can just blanket follow everyone on the list, otherwise go through and pick accounts you want to follow. Another useful tool created by Theo Sanderson allows you to find ‘people followed by lots of the people you follow’.

As well as following accounts you can try adding some feeds on topics to your profile. This spreadsheet, curated by Brian Krueger, tracks active science-based feeds.

The publishing world is slowly moving towards Bluesky. Some time ago Biorxiv created Bluesky accounts for medRxiv and each of the 24 bioRxiv subject categories. Nature Portfolio created a starter pack with all their editors. EMBO Press is there too while some others (Cell Press, Science, PLOS) have accounts but have not posted yet.

Tech tips

Funnies

I enjoyed this parody of a guide for new users, that I dubbed the Mornington Crescent guide to Bluesky.

Adam Sharp posted about the upset of not being included in a starter pack, which led to someone suggesting a Russell paradox starter pack, of all accounts which are not in a starter pack.

Warnings

Bluesky may not be everyone’s choice, and there’s no guarantee it will remain the flavour of the month.  There have been questions about its owners, and suggestions that strife/toxicity is inherent in all social media platforms, so we should not take too rosy a view.  The most encouraging point is that it has proved possible to move from one place (X) to another place (Bluesky), so if we’ve done it once then we can do it again.

Posted in Social networking | Tagged | 2 Comments

Switching socials

Posted on September 26, 2024 by Frank Norman

Changing times

When I retired it was an opportunity to make changes in my life. Obviously now I spend less time working (actually no time working), and instead have more time for reading, visiting exhibitions, going for walks/runs, and engaging in other fulfilling but non-remunerative activities. I’m still adjusting the balance but there’s been a big change since my last day of work in July 2022.

In the 21st century this ‘life activity edit’ also entails adjustments to my social media activity. This has been a challenge.

Up to 2022 much of my social media use was work-related, so my Twitter timeline was full of open access, publishing, libraries, scholarly communications and science. I’m still interested in all these things but I’m less committed and have a reduced incentive to engage in a full-throated way. I dip in to discussions and read a little but I don’t feel the need to read everything and keep on top of what’s happening.

Now that I do voluntary work in a music library I want to engage more with the world of music libraries. It’s a much smaller world and I am still new to it so I don’t know people and I have less to say about issues.

These changes prompt me to change my social media approach to reflect the new balance of my interests. However, it is a challenge to build a new network on a different topic and this has been made ten times harder by the disintegration of Twitter and the arrival of multiple alternatives.

The great migration

Since Musk acquired Twitter in late 2022 there has been a stream of people leaving and this has increased each time Musk says something outrageous. There’ve been several articles with titles like Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter and Requiem for Academic Twitter. Often those leaving Twitter switch to a different social media platform and this has stimulated some academics to study the migration phenomenon (eg Tracking the great Twitter migration and Drivers of social influence in the Twitter migration to Mastodon). These studies tell you more than you ever wanted to know about social media users, but seem to end up with fairly mundane conclusions – people leave because they’re dissatisfied, they seek out their communities on the new platforms, their posting behaviour is influenced by the differences in configuration and functionalities of the new platforms.

Cory Doctorow is typically insightful in writing about social quitting. He reminds us that the social networks which preceded the Facebook/Twitter generation all went through cycles of boom and bust. Facebook and Twitter have had a much longer boom phase but each of them are now seeing contractions. We shouldn’t be surprised by this.

Others have cautioned that we should be circumspect when choosing a new social media platform. If it is owned by the same people or companies as those responsible for the failing platforms that we are now leaving then they are likely to suffer from the same problems.

Tweet from Stan Carey: I resisted Facebook and Instagram. I swapped WhatsApp for Signal when it was sold. No way in a hundred hells would I consider joining ThreadsDorothea Salo tweet: Nothing does a better job convincing me that my librarian colleagues are LEMMINSG than watching them rush to Dorsey-owned Bluesky and Zuckerberg-owned Threads.

 

 

 

 

Migrate to where?

LinkedIn. The path of least resistance for me would be to quit Twitter and reply on LinkedIn.  I’ve been there a while so have a strong network and I do find plenty of interesting posts and conversations to read and take part in. However, it is work-focused and I don’t see my broader interests reflected there.

Mastodon. I did set up an account here a couple of years back and put a small effort into engaging there. I found some people I knew with OA interests and tech interests. I can see benefits of putting more effort in to Mastodon but I don’t think it will be useful for my new interests in music libraries, and it is a smaller network with a narrower range of people. Some people are enthusiastic about Mastodon: Steve Royle recently explained his shift from Twitter to Mastodon, giving tips for how to get started there. Maria Antoniak has also written a helpful guide for Mastodon newbies. Hilda Bastian has written several blogposts about Mastodon, and how usage has grown, though her last one was over a year ago.

PostNews. A Twitter buddy recommended this site so I set up an account.  Its focus was on news coverage and its model was a bit different.  I didn’t look there often.  It has now closed down altogether.

Spoutible. This is quite US-centric and quite political (leftish). Its founder is Christopher Bouzy, a Black tech entrepreneur.  I like the appearance and the way it works but I haven’t found people there from the community I know.  I’d need to get to know a new group of people and that will take time and much effort.

Trust Cafe. A few years ago I had created an account on WT Social – a site set up by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia renown. I had an initial poke around but rarely visited the site. I see it has now changed name to Trust Cafe, but the old accounts have not yet migrated to the new site. Trust Cafe hasn’t been mentioned much as a Twitter alternative and maybe it is just too small. I’ll explore it a bit more, when I get time.

Tweet: 'hang on honey i just need to check my account on Twitter, Mastodon, [etc etc]'.

Threads. This is the site that Zuckerberg launched to rival Twitter. I setup an account there and it imported my network from Instagram, but this was quite a small network. I look at Threads a bit, mainly when I see adverts on Facebook for posts there. There are some interesting stories though nothing I want to engage with.  I can’t help the feeling that some of the stories posted may not be 100% factual. Jon Worth says that moving to Threads would be going from the frying pan into the fire.

BlueSky.  I found it easier to get started here.  The Sky Follower Bridge browser extension proved very useful, matching accounts on Twitter that I followed to equivalent accounts on BlueSky. Unfortunately it mismatched quite a few accounts, so I started following some randoms on BlueSky. Gradually I’ve added more people to my following list, and increased my followers, and BlueSky feels like a good experience now.

Comparisons. Several people have reviewed some of the new social media offerings, mainly looking at Threads, BlueSky and Mastodon. Ian Bogost and Charlie Warzel writing in The Atlantic suggested that Threads is ‘Zombie Twitter’. They were writing in the very early days of Threads though. Jennifer Regala, writing on Science Editor,  was more enthusiastic about Threads but also liked BlueSky.  She found both platforms incldued people from her communities, but slightly preferred BlueSky. She was not keen on Mastodon, writing ‘Anything that complicated should not be considered social media from my perspective.’

David Gewirtz, writing in ZDNet, was a bit disappointed at the low number of active users in both Threads and BlueSky but suggests we need to be patient. He says that BlueSky has the most potential.  He has a soft spot for Mastodon and says it is ‘a little more complex and a little less inclusive than Twitter’ but it is solid enough, though slow going.

Excerpt from article by David Gewirtz: Had Twitter not launched first, and Mastodon had first mover advantage, I think Mastodon might have been huge. But since it's a late-to-the-party substitute solution that's a little more complex and a little less inclusive than Twitter, it's probably destined to be a bit of an edge system for the foreseeable future. That's not to say there's nothing to like, because it's nice. But it's not going to take Twitter's place as the voice of the online community overall.I frankly doubt anything will. Twitter may well have been of a time and place, and we may never see its like again.

Screenshot

Institutional accounts

Andy Tattersall has looked at why research organisations might stay on the platform and where they have moved to. There are many factors influencing the decision to stay or move. His spreadsheet (still growing) has details of more than 300 institutions with details of their accounts on different platforms. Strikingly, he says that the majority of these new accounts are inactive, so it seems institutions are hedging their bets – setting up in the new places but staying on Twitter for now.

Ned Potter has forcefully argued that academic organisations should leave Twitter, and provided a five-step plan for doing so. He says

By stopping our use of X we will be upholding our values, adapting 
to the changing landscape of social media by jettisoning a platform 
no longer delivering value, and freeing up capacity to work on more 
impactful communications.

The library where I volunteer currently has a Twitter account – engaging with other music libraries and many choirs and orchestras. I’ve not seen a move away from Twitter among those communities, but it’s something we need to keep in mind.

Curating my network

Creating a network on social media platforms is a gradual, organic process which takes time. I read an interesting post by someone and decide to follow them. I see tweets by people at an event I’m attending and I  follow them. Bit by bit I become more connected. When I move to a new platform I start with nothing so I cannot expect to be immediately immersed in interesting posts and conversations. The Sky Bridge extension mentioned above was really useful for me, and perhaps that is one reason that I am finding BlueSky more rewarding. I think regular posting and interacting with other people’s posts are the best ways to become more embedded.

My decision

I’ve read accounts from many others explaining why they have left Twitter; until now I’ve stuck it out. But there’s a limit. Musk’s political comments are increasingly egregious and outrageous and I’ve reached the point when I must make a change.

I plan to focus on BlueSky with a bit of Mastodon too and occasional glimpses at Threads. I’d like to explore Spoutible and Trust Cafe more but realistically I may not have time.

I am not deleting my Twitter account. There’s simply too much conversation still there that I want to read. I intend to refrain from posting on Twitter, but I may find it hard to resist the occasional reply there. I will try out a strategy of politely asking authors of posts I want to engage with whether they are also on BlueSky or Mastodon, or if they have plans to migrate. Otherwise I will screenshot a post and repost on BlueSky.

I hope to see you over there one day soon – I am @franknorman.bsky.social on BlueSky.

Posted in Social networking | Tagged , | Comments Off on Switching socials

My first music library conference – April 2024

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Frank Norman

Last month I attended the IAML UK & Ireland Annual Study Weekend (ASW).  IAML is the International Association of Music Libraries, and this is an event run each year by the UK & Ireland branch.

This was the first time I have attended a music library conference. I’m an old hand at libraries generally but a novice in terms of music libraries, so I had a curious mix of feelings. I felt a certain confidence but then kept remembering I have no experience in music librarianship. I know little of its history and I lack experience of what works, what’s been tried before, what all the factors are that influence how systems are set up as they are.

Leeds

This year the ASW was held in Leeds. On the morning before the conference started I spent some time exploring the city and its 19th century glories – the huge covered market, the opulent shopping arcades, the town hall. Leeds is an impressive city.

Leeds town hall, built 1853-58. 40 years ago I sang the Verdi Requiem in this building.

County Arcade.

The ASW organisers had arranged some library tours for delegates and I enjoyed seeing and learning about the history of the Leeds Library – this is a private library that was founded in 1768 with Joseph Priestley as it first Secretary. The tour gave insights into the social history of the city and the reading habits of its citizens.  If you’re ever in Leeds I recommend a visit to this library – they have regular tours, or you can just visit as a guest at certain times of day.

Interior of Leeds Library.

Blue plaque outside Leeds Library.

The first talk of the ASW was about a book recently published on popular music in Leeds. It was given by three of the co-editors: Brett Lashua, Paul Thompson and Kitty Ross.  The book, Popular Music in Leeds, brought together the perspectives of historians, community historians, sociologists, journalists and musicians and that mixture is reflected in its subtitle – “Histories, Heritage, People and Places”.

Sounds of our City.

The three speakers described the book and the way it came about. In 2020 Leeds Museums & Galleries created an exhibition (curated by Kitty Ross) called ‘Sounds of our City’ to celebrate music in Leeds. This opened just before the COVID lockdown, so it was quickly turned into an online exhibition. It focused on places in Leeds where music of all sorts was made. By various twists and turns the exhibition inspired the book.  An app is also under development which will map Leeds popular music venues and history, as well as images.

Leeds is home to the world-renowned triennial Leeds International Piano Competition (LIPC) and the 2024 event is already under way.  In a wide-ranging presentation given by key staff of the LIPC we learnt about its history and the achievement of its founder, Fanny Waterman, in creating LIPC, and how efforts are now being made to address the gender gap.

Another session which focused on Leeds and its cultural heritage was the after-dinner session of archive and special collection ‘speed dating’. We moved around ten tables, each with a librarian and an item from their collection. They had three minutes to explain what the item was and what it signified. At the end we each voted for our favourite item, and then the winner was declared. This was a great session and left me wanting to know more about all the items. I am planning a separate blogpost about this.

Music librarianship

One of my aims in attending the IAML ASW was to learn more about the community of music libraries/librarians in the UK. The conference was a nice size – about 35 attendees – so it was easy to interact with most of the people there, and find out about their work.  I also gained insights into a number of other interesting and/or inspiring tales from the broader music library world.

Three of the talks at the ASW gave insights into the work of music librarians. Peter Linnett described a raft of EDI initiatives at the Royal College of Music library. Sarah Lewis told us about her experience of moving into music librarianship, as Subject Librarian for the Creative Arts at University of Lincoln. She is developing a Libguide for the music dissertation module – it looks very good and thorough, focusing on the needs of the learner rather than on the resources. Charity Dove gave a very personal account of her 17 years working as subject librarian for music at Cardiff University. She didn’t shy away from describing some very challenging times. Her intense connection with and dedication to her user community shone through strongly.

It’s always good to hear about successful innovations and Hannah McCooke’s account of musical instrument lending in six Edinburgh public library branches was very inspiring. It’s also a reminder that not all music librarianship happens in places that are called music libraries.  The Edinburgh scheme started in August 2022 and is a collaboration with the Tinderbox Collective – a collective of young people, musicians, artists and youth workers in Scotland.  The scheme has already accumulated more than 300 instruments and in 2023 recorded over 900 loans. They have a musician-in-residence who offers tuition one day a week and puts on workshops.  The scheme has reached hundreds of children, and adults too.  They have a heap of testimonials and events under their belt. The scheme has spread beyond Edinburgh and I expect it will grow further.

The session of most direct interest to me was the one about the lending of vocal and orchestral sets in the UK, as I am volunteering in a library that lends sets to choirs and orchestras.  Lee Noon, from the Leeds performing arts library, outlined the complexity of current provision and the pressures that choral and orchestral set collections face. Someone observed that provision of sets of scores is a national service that is run at a local or regional level.  This makes it harder to provide a national strategy and achieve economies of scale.

How can we move to a more unified system of set lending? The Encore21 catalogue is a key piece of infrastructure, supported by IAML UK&Irl, but it needs to be made sustainable. It uses Koha technology which works well and is flexible, but Encore21 could be improved by adding a lending system to the catalogue. This would allow users to move easily from locating a set to effecting a loan. While desirable, this would be a big undertaking and would take some work to get agreement from all current Encore21 participants. Even agreeing a common pricing system could be very tricky. Someone suggested that the system should also cover wind band and brass band music, and should try to bring in more providers.

I wondered whether something like the UK Research Reserve would be helpful for music,  to help manage holdings of rarely-requested music sets. Exploring that possibility would be another major project.

It was noted that a survey of current providers of music sets will be launched soon, and this will be useful alongside the results of the Encore21 user survey.  I see that the Music Libraries Trust also ran a survey in 2020 and produced a report in 2022 that might guide thinking.

Ethics, diversity, archives

The session on cataloguing ethics was instructive and generated a lively discussion. It was good to hear research perspectives from Deborah Lee, a lecturer at UCL’s Department of Library & Information Studies with expertise in music knowledge organisation, and from Diane Rasmussen McAdie, Professor of Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University. Diane was a member of the Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee which drew up the Cataloguing Code of Ethics in 2021. Caroline Shaw (British Library) gave two very practical examples. In  one project context notes were added to 200 catalogue records to flag up offensive language in song titles. In another case, pushing for inclusive language led to a change in an institution’s style guide.

Another talk, by Loukia Drosopolou, told us about an 18 month-long project to catalogue the archives of some women musicians – Harriet Cohen, Astra Desmond and Phyllis Tate. This is valuable work to increase representation and make resources available to music historians.

History was also the focus of Geoff Thomason’s talk about the friendship between Adolph Brodsky and Ferruccio Busoni. They got to know each other when they were both in Leipzig and kept up links when Brodsky moved to Manchester as a professor at the Royal Manchester College of Music (now the RNCM). Brodsky suggested to Busoni that he could move to Manchester to become professor of piano, but he declined. This detailed talk showed evidence of many hours spent researching in the RNCM archives to unearth the history between the two musicians.

IAML

Several sessions provided updates about IAML and the IAML UK&Irl branch, how they work, and what they do. There is a need to broaden membership to include people outside of libraries – someone said ‘Music is everywhere’ not just in libraries, so it would be good to reach out to other places where there are music collections. I think it would also be good to include people from the music publishing business, and from the digital music sector. I think that the inclusion of multiple points of view in the group can only be a good thing.

Janet Di Franco, the IAML UK&Irl branch president, gave us a good impression of the challenges ahead, and the need for us to get involved in the work of the group.

Overall I found it an interesting and engaging small conference and hope I will be able to attend another IAML ASW in the future.

Posted in Libraries and librarians, Music | Comments Off on My first music library conference – April 2024

Sourcing music – a Making Music webinar

Posted on March 19, 2024 by Frank Norman

I recently attended a webinar about sourcing sheet music, organised by Making Music. There were more than 100 attendees, mostly from amateur orchestras and choirs, all eager to learn about the best and most cost-effective ways to procure musical scores for performing groups.

It was a comprehensive overview: we heard from 11 separate speakers, each promoting a different service. I knew something already about music libraries and music publishers, but it was interesting to learn about some of the newer community initiatives. Some of the services go beyond simply supplying scores and can help music groups discover new repertoire.

  1. Music Bank, Ben Saffell

This is a service that Making Music (MM) runs. It is a catalogue of music which can be borrowed by MM members from other MM members. Anyone can search and see what pieces are available but to see which member holds the piece (so that you can ask them to borrow it) you have to be a member of MM.  There are nearly 13,000 holdings listed.

The search function is quick and allows you either to search for a specific composer or title, or other keywords. You can also specify the work length, composer nationality, musical genre, instrumentation. It includes both choral and orchestral music. MM members can make a small charge for the music loan, but this is expected only to cover ‘postage and packaging and a small and reasonable admin fee’.

  1. ENCORE21, Lee Noon

Lee Noon is Librarian for Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Libraries – one of the biggest music lending libraries in the UK. He is also on the committee of IAML UK & Irl (the UK & Ireland branch of the International Association of Music Libraries) and was here to tell us about a service that IAML UK run called ENCORE21. This is a union catalogue of choral and orchestral sets held by libraries in Great Britain. Most of the holdings are in public library collections, but it also includes holdings in university libraries and music colleges.

It is free and open to anyone to use. It is straightforward to search but there are not any browsing options (duration, genre, nationality etc). Lee mentioned that there is uncertainty about the future funding for the maintenance of ENCORE21, and currently IAML UK is seeking views on the service.

Lee also talked in general about music services provided by public libraries. Some of them will loan direct to groups across the country. Lee recommended people to use and support their local library music service as they have to demonstrate that they are needed and useful.

In discussion it was noted that there were some interesting developments in Norfolk and Bristol public libraries.

  1. NPALS (Nottingham Performing Arts Library Service), Stephen Chartres

Stephen Chartres works for Nottingham City Council and he was the project lead for NPALS when it was developed in 2015/16.

The service has 3,500 titles and 87,000 copies. A bespoke IT system was developed that allows users to search and reserve sets without the need for manual intervention. This self-service system is available 24/7 and is designed to be sustainable and affordable and to meet user needs. It has delivered efficiency gains and has made the service more widely available. NPALS will lend directly to groups across the UK, though groups outside the east midlands will need to register (this is free). The catalogue is open to anyone to use – it allows searching by composer, title and publisher.

Details of charges are on the NPALS website. NPALS has 380 registered groups using its services, and gathers feedback via user groups. It uses some volunteer effort, though not much was said about this. NPALS is still run by Nottingham City Libraries.

The IT system that NPALS developed is also used by NewSPAL and has recently been licensed to Hertfordshire Libraries.

  1. NewSPAL (New Surrey Performing Arts Library), Mark Welling

Mark Welling is chair of the trustees of NewSPAL. NewSPAL was set up by users of the former Surrey Performing Arts Library (SPAL) when that was closed by Surrey County Council. It is an independent charity and took over the stock of the former SPAL. It has over 4,000 titles and about 125,000 copies. The catalogue is free to browse and you can also check availability. The music was recatalogued by volunteer musicians and singers.

NewSPAL uses the NPALS software to provide an online catalogue and reservation service.  It lends directly across the UK and more than half of its members are outside Surrey. Users need to register (costing £15) in order to borrow, but there is no annual charge. Hire charges are benchmarked against public library charges. NewSPAL is not-for-profit. It is always interested to hear what users want, and it has made some acquisitions in response to demand.

There are two professional music librarians and volunteers also help to run the service.

  1. PMLL (Printed Music Licensing Limited), Viki Smith

Viki Smith is general manager of PMLL, which is part of the Music Publishers’ Association. PMLL represents the rights of music publishers and issues licences on behalf of the rights-holders permitting the reproduction of printed music.

Viki told us about the Amateur Choir Licence. This licence enables choirs to legally copy sheet music, and allows minor arrangements (eg a key shift). It is only for pieces up to 16 pages long. There is an annual charge for the licence, based on the number of members of the choir and the number of works to be licensed. Choirs need to report what they have copied. Copies can be used for 24 months; after that the choir will need to re-license them.

There is guidance on using the licence on the website and also guides on hiring and using music. The PMLL website also has a useful section called ‘Raising the bar – Essential Advice on Launching Your Amateur Choir’.

  1. Hal Leonard, Oliver Winstone

Oliver Winstone is Strategic Partnership & Education Manager at Hal Leonard, which is both the largest print music publisher in the world and also the biggest music distributor in Europe, representing more than 100 publishers. Hal Leonard also owns musicroom.com and provides digital music services. Their website has a comprehensive catalogue of all the music that they can supply.

Oliver said he was interested in feedback on digital services for choirs, and the digital learning tools. I couldn’t find details of these on the Hal Leonard website, but I think he was talking about ChoralMix – see this article to learn more about it.  He also mentioned the Arrange Me function, whereby you can upload an arrangement that you have made of a work and Hal Leonard will sort out the rights and profit share with the arranger.

  1. Composers Edition, Dan Goren

Dan Goren is the founding director of Composers Edition (CE), a different kind of contemporary music publisher.

CE has about 90 living composers as members and it works hard to promote them and their music, working with professional and community music groups to support performance of contemporary music. CE will help performing groups to find new music to fit into a programme and can help to make links between groups and composers, e.g  commissioning new works. A section of the CE website is devoted to commissioning new works.

The CE catalogue can be browsed by composer and by category (choir, orchestra etc), and you can apply filters such as ‘theme’, duration, and date range. You can also preview the score before committing to purchase.

Dan said that CE is keen to support community music groups and is prepared to be flexible when making deals.

  1. Choir Community, Piers McLeish

Piers McLeish is the CEO and cofounder of Choir Community, a music publisher that provides high quality musical arrangements of a wide range of titles and genres. They have about 25 arrangers on the books and about 1400 titles. You can freely search or filter by composers, genre, choir type, voicing, accompaniment, duration and difficulty. CC aim to provide music at affordable prices. Choirs must register and provide information on the number of choir members and the cost of a licence for an arrangement is based on this. Currently CC has about 9,500 registered choirs, half of them in the UK.

You can preview the music and also listen to an audio file. There are also learning tracks available to purchase.

CC makes some items available free of charge. They are a musical partner to RNLI in its bicentenary year and have published a collection of pieces with a maritime theme. One of these is free to download too.

They have a blog, and there is an interesting blogpost on Making Music Day, 21 June 2024.

  1. Newzik, Emma Hakimi

Emma Hakimi is a sales manager at Newzik, a digital music provider based in France. Newzik launched in 2014 and its first paperless concert was held in 2016. They have 40,000 clients, including many leading professional orchestras and ensembles. Newzik works with most of the leading music publishers.

The company provides digital scores, and these are held in the cloud. Performers access  via the Newzik app and will see their part in the app, drawn from the same central score. Each performer can mark up their part as they wish. Newzik has collaborative features that can be useful – e.g. allowing performers to share their markings if they wish. Emma said that this can save time in rehearsal.

Newzik has many interesting features, and clearly represents a very different model. Emma mentioned that they give discounts to small and amateur groups. I’m not sure whether many amateur groups are ready to move into digital music, but I expect it will start to happen in the next few years.

  1. Contemporary Music for All (CoMA), Emory Southwick

Emory Southwick is Music Sales and Catalogue Coordinator at CoMA, an organisation that encourages amateur musicians to take part in contemporary music making. Its music collection includes 900 pieces of vocal and instrumental music, many with flexible scoring. Included in the collection are many partsongs. Prices range from £20 to £60 for a full score plus parts.

  1. Light Music Society, David Greenhalgh

David Greenhalgh is a trustee and librarian of the Light Music Society, which is the custodian of the Library of Light Orchestral Music. This is based in Bolton and holds about 40,000 sets of orchestral and dance band music. About 5,000 composers are represented, including more than 100 women composers.

The catalogue is free to use and loan charges range from £10 – £40, plus an annual membership fee of £33.

  1. Other sources

During the session some other sources were mentioned too, by the organisers or other attendees or in the chat.

  • Gerontius has a searchable directory of music for hire
  • IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) is an online library of public domain (out of copyright) music
  • Musica International is a database of choral music, about 200,000 items
  • CYM Library is an independent not-for-profit music library with nearly 1500 sets available for loan. (Disclaimer: this is where I volunteer).

Two other services that weren’t mentioned but I have heard recommended are:

  • Chameleon Music Hire has over 4,000 titles available to choirs
  • Zinfonia  combines information from many hire and sale catalogues in one place.
Posted in Libraries and librarians, Music | Comments Off on Sourcing music – a Making Music webinar

Switching to a new library world

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Frank Norman

Between leaving school and going to university I spent a year working as a library assistant in a public library service; not a branch library but the headquarters of the service. The Library HQ had a large reserve stock, supplementing what was held in the branch libraries, and some specialist stock (standards, sound recordings, music & drama). It received many requests from branch libraries every day so things were always busy. I had already decided that I wanted to become a librarian and this temporary job gave me a useful introduction to some basic bibliographical skills, book handling skills (shelving, tidying) and practice at clerical tasks.

There was a group of half a dozen library assistants and we cycled through various different departments on a monthly basis.  At least, that was what was supposed to happen but after a few months the cycling stopped as we were short staffed. One unfortunate person got stuck on general duties but I was lucky to be in the Music and Drama section at that point and I spent six months there altogether. Our job in this section was lending out sets of orchestral parts, vocal scores and plays. This was great for me as I was a classical music fan and keen on singing in choirs.

Fast forward nearly 50 years. My career in biomedical libraries is completed and I’ve retired. I’ve spent a goodly amount of my spare time during those years singing in choirs but I’ve stepped back from that too. What next? It’s time to combine my library and musical expertise, and give something back to the world of amateur music making.

Eighteen months ago I started volunteering for the CYM Library – a music library that lends out orchestral and vocal sets. Mostly we lend to amateur groups – choirs and orchestras. Once again I am counting vocal scores, checking orchestral sets are complete, rubbing out pencil markings, checking our catalogue and the shelves to see if we can satisfy a request, making up parcels.

The CYM Library is an independent charity with one paid (part-time) member of staff plus several volunteers. It is self-funded, though occasional external grants make it possible to purchase new stock. It’s been good to feel that I’m contributing my time and skills to a worthwhile cause.

Obviously it is a very different library world from what I’ve been used to, but there are overlaps and parallels.  Some of my ‘transferable skills’ come in useful too.

Anyway, don’t be surprised to see a few posts here from the world of music libraries.

Posted in Libraries and librarians, Music, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Switching to a new library world

Futurepub March 2024 – International Women’s Day

Posted on March 8, 2024 by Frank Norman

The latest event in the Futurepub series, on 4 March 2024, took International Women’s Day as its theme. The topics of the talks were related to women and four out of the five speakers were women.

It was held at Bounce – a large basement bar and table tennis venue. As with the event last October (which focused on AI) there was not an emphasis on publishing and scholarly communications. It was an interesting evening nonetheless.

The talks were recorded and will be available on the Cassyni platform.

Suze Sundu was the host for the evening. Suze wrote recently on the TL;DR blog about ‘Empowering Women in STEM‘ and in that piece she mentions her recent interview with Dame Athene Donald (an Occams blogger).  Dame Athene’s book Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science  is required reading for anyone who wants gender balance in science.

  1. Subhadra Das

The first speaker was Subhadra Das, talking about ‘The History we Deserve’. Subhadra is a ‘writer, historian, broadcaster and comedian, who looks at the relationship between science and society’. A historian of science, she is particularly interested in the history of scientific racism and eugenics.

Subhadra clearly knows her subject and she also knows how to communicate. She had the audience in the palm of her hand, making us laugh one moment and think (or wince) the next. Her recent book, Uncivilised, is definitely going on my personal reading list.

Subhadra said that ‘old ideas shape new stories’. I guess that implies that we should try to break free from the constraints that these old ideas can place on our thinking. She reminded us that the complete title of Charles Darwin’s famous work is ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life ‘. Ouch! That subtitle is very uncomfortable. Subhadra asked us if Darwin was racist, answering her own question in the affirmative but adding that it was more complicated than a simple ‘yes’.

She also introduced us to a less familiar evolutionary pioneer, Edward Drinker Cope (1840-97).  Cope was a self-taught palaeontologist from the USA who made significant contributions to the field, but he had pronounced racist and sexist views. Those ideas seem very out-of-date to modern ears but there are plenty of people today whose thinking is influenced by them, knowingly or otherwise.

Subhadra finished by giving us a short reading list:

  • Annabel Sowemimo’s book Divided on racism in medicine
  • Ruha Benjamin’s Race after Technology on how social hierarchies are embedded in internet tech
  • Joy Buolamwini’s Unmasking AI on encoded discrimination and exclusion in AI.
  1. Hélène Draux

Next up was Hélène Draux, a Senior Data Scientist at Digital Science, talking on ‘What The Decline in Women’s First Publications Means For Research’. She told us that while the trend in the proportion of women publishing their first academic paper had been increasing since 2000, it peaked in 2021 and is now in decline. It is not clear what is causing this reversal, but it is a worrying trend. I suspect that the COVID lockdown might have something to do with it.

You can read more about her findings in this blogpost on TL;DR.

Hélène posed some questions that need further exploration:

  • Is this trend true at institutional level?
  • Is there a difference within fields of research?
  • Is there a difference between funded and unfunded research?
  1. Jennifer Rohn

Jenny is well-known to Occam’s regulars as the author of the Mind the Gap blog on this platform where she writes about her life as a professor at UCL, a scientific researcher, a novelist and a mother. Her subject this evening was ‘Outsmarting urinary tract infection’.

She noted that her area of scientific research, UTIs, was typically a conversation stopper. But it is an important issue.  There are about 400 million cases of UTIs every year and it is predominantly a disease of women. Jenny noted that there has been little progress in this “mostly women” disease and research funding is hard to come by. (Funders – you need to do better!)

Antibiotic treatment often fails as the bacteria causing UTIs can evade the drugs commonly used to treat them. Jenny’s lab has developed a 3D model of human bladder tissue that allows her team to study what is going on at a cellular level. Jenny is using this miniature system to study UTIs and how we can deliver drugs directly to the site of infection and knock out the offending bugs.

  1. Joe Twyman

Joe is the co-founder and director of the public opinion consultancy Deltapoll so he knows something about survey technique. His talk was provocatively titled ‘Sex with Strangers – what could possibly go wrong?’ It’s a serious-sounding topic but Joe had the audience in uncontrollable laughter from the outset.

He told us about a classic paper by Clark and Hatfield: “Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers” that was published in 1989. The authors found that whereas 75% of men will have sex with strangers, 0% of women will do so. The paper has been cited more than 1200 times.

Joe dug into the details to give a devastating critique of the paper – the small sample size, the homogeneity of the sample (one Florida university campus), the cis-het focus, the way the questions were asked, the survey technique. Joe also pointed out that a high profile serial murderer and rapist had been active in the area prior to the research being undertaken. All in all, the paper’s findings can be called into question.

In the midst of his very funny presentation he raised a serious issue about how and why a flawed piece of research can become such an influential and highly cited paper in its field.

Joe summarised with a couple of points:

  • The questions respondents actually answer do not always align with the questions that respondents are asked
  • You need to know ‘how the sausage is made’, particularly in the context of gender
  1. Kate Devlin

Kate Devlin from King’s College spoke on ‘Navigating the AI sea of dudes’. She displayed a photograph of the 1956 Dartmouth AI workshop – all those shown were men, though there were women doing important work in AI at that time.

In 2016 Margaret Mitchell, an AI researcher at Microsoft, talked about a ‘sea of dudes’ in the AI space. People (i.e. men) told her she was wrong. Mitchell pointed out that this imbalance is important because ‘gender has an effect on the types of questions that we ask’.

Kate asked what has the discipline done since 2016 to improve things and make it fairer and more representative of the world? Sadly, nothing. She showed us persuasive evidence that there is still still a serious dude problem in tech. Things are improving, but very slowly.

  1. Wrap-up

The evening ended with food and drinks and networking, as well as a (very noisy) table tennis tournament. It was good to catch up with various people from the scholarly comms world. I hope future events will bring back some scholarly comms focus to the talks.

I tweeted and skeeted a little on the #futurepub hashtag. I didn’t see any other social media activity about the event, aside from a few pre-event posts on #futurepub. I guess that event tweeting (etc) is dying out.

UPDATE: You can read a fuller account of the evening over on Digital Science’s TL;DR blog.

Posted in Journal publishing, Women | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Futurepub March 2024 – International Women’s Day