Research at the British Library

On Friday we spent the day at the British Library, which is just around the corner from our hotel on Euston Street.  Our class took a "digital research" seminar with Martin Swan, who gave us a tour of the library, discussed the techniques and pitfalls of electronic searching, and then encouraged the students to team up and examine books and manuscripts in the "treasures" room, which became the basis of multimedia presentations in the afternoon.

It is hard to overestimate the quality of materials we were able to examine first hand: The Magna Carta, Anglo Saxon Chronicle, earliest Greek manuscript of the New Testament, letters by Michelangelo, Durer, and Leonardo, the earliest definitive version of Beowulf, numerous bibles and ecclesiastical texts, documents and letters from Jane Austen, Haydn, Elizabeth I, Mary I, Henry VIII, the Beatles, and many more.

Kelsey and Jill worked with this intriguing primary source, a 1553 letter written by 20-year-old princess Elizabeth Tudor to King Edward VI while the young king was ill (they saw the original copy, which has also been digitized here):

http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large102725.html

Martin (below left) literally had to drag our students out of the reading room to continue working on their projects, but the presentations were great.  Here are photos of the class in research mode, doing some group work in our classroom near the collections, as well as presenting their results:

The weird drawing is a low-tech "lobster offering" used in a presentation to remind the class of gifts received during Captain Cook's voyages in the Pacific.  (One primary document presented riddles about his voyages that our group solved.)  Yes, the team's use of the lobster sketch was a bit eccentric...

With a good day of library work under our belts, we broke about 3:30 p.m. and are now spending a more casual weekend in London, with time for individual excursions.  A few members of the group have permission to leave on short sojourns, and are heading for York, South England, Wales, Ireland, and Germany.  We will have much to report when we reassemble on Sunday night!

Art and Music

Friday evenings are very fun in London.  A wonderful custom for some locals is visiting the National Gallery or National Portrait Gallery at night, which are both open up to 9:00 p.m. on Friday.  It is very charming to see these important museums filled not with tourists but with well-dressed locals, enjoying their famous museums with a glass of wine in their hand, and casual conversations in front of Botticelli, Raphael, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Cezanne, etc.  I was able to sneak into these museums for about two hours before seeing Billy Elliot, and it was well worth the trip.

At the National Gallery I took in the most amazing little concert I have every experienced in a museum. Three advanced graduate students from the Royal College of Music in London performed Italian baroque compositions in front of a painting by Michelangelo; apparently the space is used as a way to cross-fertilize artists, so that musicians view the art extensively, and then pick songs that seems to resonate to them in the room. 

The three musicians were harpsichord, violin, and a stunning counter-tenor named Randall Scotting, who is finishing a doctorate in music performance at the Royal College of Music, and clearly off to an amazing career as an opera and baroque singer.  His high, pure, tenor voice was absolutely stunning and controlled.  To be a few feet away hearing their interpretations of the paintings of was ridiculously amazing.  This is the view from my seat, with the unfinished Michelangelo "Entombment of Christ" in the background:

Now that's a nice way to hang out on a Friday night--go London!

Mike