Research Notes

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XVI, Issue 1, 1 May 1983, Page 62

Research Notes

Conferences and Seminars

Dr Michael Hunter, a lecturer in history at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a 1982 visiting fellow at the Humanities Research Centre, Canberra, visited New Zealand in late August with the assistance of a travel grant from the Research Endowment Fund. He presented a paper on the problem of atheism in early modern England at the Turnbull Early Modern History Seminar at Victoria University on Saturday 18 August, and delivered lectures at Massey University, the University of Canterbury, and Victoria University. Dr Hunter, who is a member of the editorial committee of the Book Collector, addressed the Friends of the Turnbull Library on the origins of modern book collecting on 22 August. Dr Hunter’s publications include John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning (1975), Science and Society in Restoration England (1981) and The Royal Society and its Fellows, 1660-1700 (in press). A private visit to New Zealand by Professor J. G. A. Pocock of Johns Hopkins University provided the opportunity for a short conference of the New Zealand Early Modern Studies Association at the Turnbull over the weekend of 19-20 March 1983. Under the general title of‘Politics and Ideology 1750-1850’ papers were presented by Professor Pocock on ‘The transformations of Toryism 1688-1830’, Dr Knud Haakonssen (History of Ideas Unit, Australian National University) on ‘James MacKintosh and the question of a Whig philosophy’, and Dr John Morrow (Victoria University) on ‘The ideological content of Coleridge’s thought’. Dr Haakonssen’s visit was funded by the Turnbull Research Endowment Fund.

The second annual conference of the New Zealand Musicological Society, organised by Dr Warren Drake of the University of Auckland, was held at the Turnbull Library during the weekend of 14-15 August 1982. The introductory paper, ‘The Uses of Musicology’ by Heath Lees, traced the relatively short history of the discipline and stressed the need for more interaction with other scholarly fields. Renaissance topics then followed, with Warren Drake’s ‘Josquin’s Ave Maria . . . Ave Cujus Conceptio and its Background: a Reappraisal of a Well-known Motet’, and John Steel’s ‘Plagiarism and Parody—Felis, Dowland, Messaus’. The Baroque period was represented by Peter Walls’s ‘Masque and Semi-opera: Aberrations in the History of Opera?’ and Frances Warrington on performance practices in a Frescobaldi toccata, demonstrated on a harpsichord carefully carried up the Library’s steps for the occasion. Sunday’s session commenced with analysis topics: Rosemary Quinn’s Schenkerian analysis of Beethoven’s An die feme Geliebte, and Elizabeth Kerr’s discussion on the unity in Webern’s Symphonie Op. 21, movement 2. John M. Thomson, who is at present writing a history of music in New Zealand, presented the concluding paper of the conference,

‘Nineteenth-century Touring Opera Companies in Australia and New Zealand’, a fascinating account of the early entrepreneurs and their influence.

The first national conference on the history of science in New Zealand, jointly sponsored by the Library and the Royal Society of New Zealand, was held in the Legislative Council Chamber, Parliament Buildings, from 12 to 14 February 1983. The conference, which attracted over 150 registrations, was opened by Sir Charles Fleming, chairman of the organising committee, and closed by Dr the Hon. I. J. Shearer, Minister of Science and Technology. Twenty-five papers were circulated in advance to participants and presented, with questions and discussion, by their authors. A selection of the papers will be published as the proceedings of the conference. The conference attracted people from overseas, including Dr Peter Whitehead from the Natural History Museum, London, whose travel funds were provided by the British Council. Costs of the conference were underwritten by the Alexander Turnbull Library Research Endowment Fund and grants were received from a number of business firms with an involvement in science and technology.

Grants from Research Fund Recent grants from the Alexander Turnbull Library Research Endowment Fund to support ‘scholarly research and publication based on the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library’ included a second grant to DrJ. E. Cookson, University of Canterbury, for research on the peace movement in New Zealand; to Professor Lawrence Jones, University of Otago, for work on the papers of New Zealand writers; and to Dr Michael Hunter (see above). Grants in aid of publication have been made to the Auckland University Press for their edition of George Pritchard’s The Aggressions of the French at Tahiti, edited by Dr Paul de Deckker, and for Helen Shaw’s edition of the letters between D’Arcy Cresswell and Lady Ottoline Morrell. A grant was also made towards the accommodation costs in New Zealand of Professor Sandra Myres, the 1982 Fulbright research scholar at the Turnbull.

Publications The Resolution Journal of Johann Reinhold Forster, 1772-1775, edited by Dr Michael E. Hoare in four volumes, was published by the Hakluyt Society early in 1983. The publication was formally launched at a ceremony held at the Library on 14 February. The speakers were the Hon. Alan Highet, MP, speaking on behalf of the New Zealand Government, His Excellency Dr H. A. Steger, the German Ambassador, and Sir Harold Smedley, KCMG, a member of the Council of the Society. Dr Hoare is the Turnbull Manuscripts Librarian. The first volume of‘Early Eyewitness Accounts of Maori Life’, Extracts from Journals Relating to the Visit to New Zealand of the French Ship St Jean Baptiste in December 1769 under the Command of J. F. M. de Surville, with

transcriptions and translations by Isabel Ollivier and Cheryl Hingley, and an appendix of charts and drawings compiled by Jeremy Spencer, was published by the Endowment Trust in association with the National Library of New Zealand early in 1983. Copies are on sale from the Library, to Friends only, at a special price of sl6. New Zealand sales are from the Government Bookshop at $18.95; overseas sales from the Library. All sales of A Descriptive Catalogue of the Milton Collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library . . . compiled by K. A. Coleridge (Oxford University Press for the Alexander Turnbull Library, 1980) will be handled by the Turnbull Office from 1983. A few copies are still available to Friends at the special price of $65. Towards Maturity: Turnbull Winter Lectures 1982 (Victoria University Press for the Friends of the Turnbull Library, 1982) is now available to Friends from the Library at a special price of SB. Commercial sales from booksellers are at $9.95. A Guide to Manuscripts Relating to Science in the Alexander Turnbull Library (30p.) issued for the history of science conference is now on sale at the Library for $3 (50c postage).