British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the north-western coast of continental Europe that consist of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. Situated in the North Atlantic, the islands have a total area of approximately 315,159 km², and a combined population of just under 70 million. Two sovereign states are located on the islands: Ireland (which covers roughly five-sixths of the island with the same name) and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The British Isles also include three Crown Dependencies: the Isle of Man and, by tradition, the Bailiwick of Jersey and the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the Channel Islands, although the latter are not physically a part of the archipelago.

The oldest rocks in the group are in the north west of Scotland, Ireland and North Wales and are 2,700 million years old. During the Silurian period the north-western regions collided with the south-east, which had been part of a separate continental landmass. The topography of the islands is modest in scale by global standards. Ben Nevis rises to an elevation of only 1,344 metres (4,409 ft), and Lough Neagh, which is notably larger than other lakes on the isles, covers 390 square kilometres (151 sq mi). The climate is temperate marine, with mild winters and warm summers. The North Atlantic Drift brings significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C (20 °F) above the global average for the latitude. This led to a landscape which was long dominated by temperate rainforest, although human activity has since cleared the vast majority of forest cover. The region was re-inhabited after the last glacial period of Quaternary glaciation, by 12,000 BC when Great Britain was still a peninsula of the European continent. Ireland, which became an island by 12,000 BC, was not inhabited until after 8000 BC. Great Britain became an island by 5600 BC.

List of islands of the British Isles

This page is a list of the larger islands that form the British Isles, listing area and population data. The total area of the islands is 315,159 km².Great Britain accounts for the majority this area at 66%, with Ireland accounting for 26%, leaving the remaining 8%—an area of 24,190 km²—comprising thousands of smaller islands. The largest of the other islands are to be found in the Hebrides and Northern Isles to the north, and Anglesey and the Isle of Man between Great Britain and Ireland. Also included are the Channel Islands, not strictly part of the British Isles archipelago as they are positioned off the French coast of Normandy, but traditionally included because of their political connection with the United Kingdom. This inclusion, in part, has resulted in the British Isles naming dispute.

The number of permanently inhabited islands (besides the two main islands):

British Isles naming dispute

In standard English usage, the toponym "the British Isles" refers to a European archipelago consisting of Great Britain, Ireland and adjacent islands. However, the word "British" is also an adjective and demonym referring to the United Kingdom. For this reason, the name British Isles is avoided in Irish English as such usage could be construed to imply continued territorial claims or political overlordship of the Republic of Ireland by the United Kingdom.

Proposed alternatives to renaming the British Isles to something more neutral include "Britain and Ireland", "Atlantic Archipelago", "Anglo-Celtic Isles", the "British-Irish Isles" and the Islands of the North Atlantic. In documents drawn up jointly between the British and Irish governments, the archipelago is referred to simply as "these islands".

To some, the dispute is partly semantic and the term is a value-free geographic one while, to others, it is a value-laden political one. The Crown dependencies of the Channel Islands, are considered part of the British Islands and may also for geo-political reasons be included in the British Isles, despite not being geographically part of the archipelago. Early variants of the term date back to Ancient Greek times; it fell into disuse for over a millennium, and was introduced into English in the late 16th or early 17th centuries by English and Welsh writers whose writings have been described as propaganda and politicised. The term became more resisted after the breakup of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1922.

Early music

Early music is music, especially Western art music, composed prior to the Classical era. The term generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1760), and, according to some authorities such as Kennedy (who excludes Baroque),Ancient music (before 500 AD). According to the UK's National Centre for Early Music, the term "early music" refers to both a repertory (European music written between 1250 and 1750 embracing Medieval, Renaissance and the Baroque) – and a historically informed approach to the performance of that music. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises, instruments and other contemporary evidence."

Revival

Performance practice

According to Margaret Bent, "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness. Accidentals … may or may not have been notated, but what modern notation requires would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint".

Early Music (journal)

Early Music is a peer-reviewed academic journal specialising in the study of early music. It was established in 1973 and is published quarterly by Oxford University Press. The editor in chief is Francis Knights.

Early Music (Lachrymæ Antiquæ)

Early Music (Lachrymæ Antiquæ) (the subtitle means "Ancient Tears" in Latin) is a studio album by the Kronos Quartet, containing 21 compositions, many of which written, arranged, or transcribed for the quartet. The title track is from Dowland's Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares of 1604.

Compositions

The album contrasts adaptations for string quartet of music from the Middle Ages and early Renaissance with 20th-century compositions. The earliest piece is by the ninth-century Byzantine abbess, poet and composer Kassia; the most recent pieces are by the twentieth-century composers John Cage, Alfred Schnittke, and Arvo Pärt. Arranging and selecting compositions from ten centuries of music was intended, according to David Harrington, the quartet's founder, "to find a way of relating vastly different pieces to one time, to find a place in time where the elements meet." Harrington described the contrast between old and new music as crucial to the quartet: "There are moments when the music could have come out of the Middle Ages; there are other moments when it sounds like it's coming out of the Vietnam War, let's say. That contrast is something we've been working with for a long time." Allan Kozinn, writing in The New York Times, describes the album as a concept album in which "the distinctions between old and new are blurred, and the effect is comforting rather than disconcerting."

Early music of the British Isles

Early music of the British Isles, from the earliest recorded times until the beginnings of the Baroque in the 17th century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite. Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century.