Recruitment Article
Article written for the Bonn English Singers, also availale at: http://bonnenglishsingers.de/men-wanted-apply-within/
Men Wanted: apply within
By Julia Lee Dean, Bonn English Singers “I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humour.” – Brian Eno. If Mr Eno is to be believed, it is amazing that so many mixed choirs lack men. Surely, they should be bursting at the seams with fine specimens of what many women consider The Ideal Man. There should be waiting lists and three taxing tasks for anyone who even hopes to audition. Yet this is not the case; while plenty of women sign up to sing, nearly every choir struggles to attract male singers – and the Bonn English Singers are no exception. Why would anyone not want to sing? Now, Brian Eno’s assertion might be somewhat open to debate; Sophia Loren famously attributed her lovely figure to spaghetti, not singing, and a stable temperament is something that has typically given many a talented musician an especially wide berth, but singing is fun. To get to the root of the problem, I asked the male members of the Bonn English Singers what they liked about the choir – and why they thought more men didn’t join. Reiner (tenor) suggests that men are simply a little shy about their singing abilities and said that he would encourage anyone to just give it a go, saying that it is the opportunity to meet new people and improve his singing skills that he enjoys most about being a member of the choir. Martin (tenor) agrees, adding that it has given him the chance to practice and improve his English while enabling him to build long-term friendships with people from a variety of backgrounds whom he may not have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. As it turns out, the social aspect is as big a draw for men as it is for women. Erik (bass) highlights the social side of choir life – the get-togethers and the annual summer party in addition to weekends away and weekly rehearsals. He points out that, with a two-thirds female majority, the choir should surely be of interest to single men looking for a partner. After all, all the nice girls might say they love a sailor but who wouldn’t prefer a man who can sing? Fab (tenor) met his wife at the second rehearsal he attended thirteen years ago and, although he now lives 125km from Bonn, he still performs with us occasionally. Admittedly these guys have been members for some time and it may be that perseverance brings its own rewards. But what our men like about our choir is available to new members from day one. And if members are willing to travel 125km to sing with us even after thirteen years, isn’t a good sing worth a few hours of your time? So cast aside your preconceptions – singing can be sexy and it can be funny, sometimes even intentionally. The Bonn English Singers is a special choir; in fact, as one of only a handful of English-language choirs in Germany, we like to think we’re almost unique. So if you fancy having a go, just turn up and give us a try. You never know, you might even like us. Old Fashioned | $7.00
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Newsletters / In-company communicationNewsletter originally written for the Bonn English Singers
BES Newsletter No 4 (week 9/2015) ~ Dear Singers The sopranos were somewhat outnumbered this week. Faced with the mighty harmonic force that is the altos, we felt a bit like an army of Royalists who had arrived for a bit of a dust-up only to find themselves confronted by Cromwell’s Ironsides.[1] Uphill. Still, we kept our powder dry, trusted in God and... reinforcements arrived in the nick of time and we were able to take the field. Fresh from the Streets of London[2] Fraser was in expansive mood. Instead of the usual diet of warm-up tongue-twisters, we were treated to Fraser’s Guide to the Alphabet. Now anyone who has learned or taught English alphabet as a foreign language will agree that pronunciation is a...er...rotter. It’s even trickier when singing (English is arguably the hardest language to sing in – French being the other contender though for a slightly different reason) so this quick reminder of the various pitfalls offered by the consonants was definitely useful. Our musical education was continued with Fraser explaining – and demonstrating – Elgar’s use of exposition in #6 The Marksman; twice frustrated then bursting forth in exuberant relief. Perhaps inevitably, this led to renewed speculation about what the Elgars got up to on their honeymoon; I learned a new German phrase this week and never before has the term Kopfkino seemed more appropriate or the images more disturbing. For those who would like more details about this glorious piece of music, here’s a link I found to programme notes from a 1904 performance: https://csoarchives.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/elgar-in-the-south-1904-nov-4-thomas.pdf [1] The New Model Army. Cromwell, while no asset to Anglo-Irish relations, was a legendary general, never beaten in battle. Charles I took it quite badly, in fact he completely lost his head... [2] English Folk Song by Ralph McTell – if you don’t know the song it’s worth a Google. Academic / research essays
Fighting on the Home Front.
Tuberculosis; the nation’s greatest domestic war Popular iconography of the First World War abounds with groups of blood-shod[1], gas-blind young men and hospital grains disgorging their cargoes of amputees and heavily bandaged stretcher-cases. Less commented on are those who returned bearing no physical wounds and who faced an even more uncertain future than those who knew they would never return to their pre-war trades. The plight of those who returned from the war suffering from “shell-shock”, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as it is now more properly known, has been well documented. However, those suffering from tuberculosis were in a similarly precarious position. Not because the disease was not recognised – tuberculosis was all too common; in 1916 it was estimated that the illness cost 50,000 lives every year[2] and over the period of the war tuberculosis mortality rose by 17%[3] - but because soldiers invalided out of the armed forces with tuberculosis qualified for a pension only if the Medical Board determined that their condition was due to military service. Under the terms of the Royal Warrant, a man could only qualify for a disability pension if his disability or injury was not only due to his service but had originated in it. The difficulty was obvious. Unlike physical injury, disease could not be seen and therefore it was very difficult to attribute to it a specific cause or pin down an exact moment of onset. This was particularly tricky in the case of tuberculosis because it is a disease that can lie dormant in the body for years becoming active. In some cases it becomes active only when the body become debilitated in some way. It was perfectly possible, then, for a man to be passed – and to be - medically fit for active service only to develop tuberculosis within a few months of enlistment.[4] Similarly, a man who had previously received sanatorium treatment and been discharged “cured”[5] could live a full and productive life in years that followed only to break down within weeks of enlistment. In both cases the soldier would be discharged from the army with very little charge of a pension on the basis that the condition had been pre-existing. In The Problem of the Tuberculous Soldier[6], Harries discussed his own analysis of cases admitted to Beechwood Tuberculosis Hospital in Newport, Monmouthshire during the first six months of its existence. Of 123 soldier admissions, he noted, 109 had pulmonary tuberculosis, five cases were doubtful and not considered to have tuberculosis while four had been diagnosed with non-pulmonary tuberculosis. Of the 109 cases with pulmonary tuberculosis, 77 were absolutely definite “open” (TB in sputum) cases, 32 were “clinically definite” (TB not found in sputum). For each of these cases, histories were taken to determine what proportion of men had already had tuberculosis at the time of enlistment. 14 men were known to have had a history of lung problems; others had been discharged from service from 14 days after enlistment with lesions of a size that made it very unlikely that they could have been formed during the short time they had spent in the army. For other cases it was simply impossible to tell whether the disease was absent of present at the date of enlistment. This would seem to show that while it was possible to determine cases that were almost definitely not due solely to military service, there was sufficient room for doubt to make the grounds for withholding of a pension doubtful. …the disabled soldier has the best possible claim to be treated not merely with fairness, but with generosity.[7] An article written in The Lancet in 1916[8], just before the introduction of conscription argued that, in such cases, a man who had been considered fit enough to be permitted to serve his country and for whom, active service had aggravated an underlying weakness where he might otherwise have remained in good health and capable of earning his living had he never enlisted, deserved better than to be returned abruptly to civilian life without any means of support.[9] Writing three months later, Sir William Ostler agreed that there was an obligation upon society to care for the tuberculous among the fighting men.[10] He argued that, in most cases the germ enlists with the soldier[11] and that while the hardship of army life may encourage the development of the tuberculosis bacillus where it is already in residence, the instances of tuberculosis was in fact lower among enlisted men than among those who remain civilians, thus supporting the belief that military service did not weaken but strengthen the body[12] which can only have added to the ongoing debate as to those who were discharged sick with tuberculosis could reasonably cite military service as an aggravating cause. Nevertheless, Sir William maintained that it was society that was directly responsible for the prevalence of tuberculosis and therefore the onus was upon society to take responsibility for those whom the disease affected be they civilian or military.[13] It was with society in mind that the problem of tuberculous soldiers can be seen most clearly. During the Great War, the military practice was to discharge as unfit soldiers diagnosed with tuberculosis. The Insurance Commissioners received notification from the War Office of the soldiers about to be discharged and they, in turn, notified the Local Insurance Committees responsible for each man and which then took charge of his case. As a general rule, the treatment provisions offered included sanatorium accommodation. However, although this was often considered inadequate, the real problem lay in the fact that accepting treatment was optional. It is perhaps hard to understand such ambivalence towards treatment in a man diagnosed with a serious illness. Soldiers thus discharged in this period, however, automatically lost the separation allowance that had supported their families and, in the absence of any pension and unable to work, often faced real poverty, even destitution. In too many cases, soldiers discharged as Tuberculous renounced their chance of a lasting recovery in their anxiety to support their families.[14] By refusing treatment – or at least treatment of sufficient length – men who might otherwise have regained a good level of health degenerated into chronic invalids and, in so doing, became not only a burden on the community in which they lived but also a source of wider infection. E. H. R Harries, TB Physician to King Edward VII[15] saw the discharge of a large number of tuberculous men from the army as a source of concern, not only for the men themselves but also for impact on public health. The fact that these men were returned to civilian status before treatment, he argued, was as much the source of the problem as the war experience of the men concerned. Those who have been to the front have been inured to the sight of appalling wounds and… acute forms of illness… they have been accustomed to make light of such a commonplace as a severe cold or a chronic cough and have carried on until bowled over… by the toxaemia of tuberculosis.[16] As suggested above, the dilemma that the tuberculosis patient faced was one of economics. In the few instances in which a pension was awarded, and out of 2,770 cases in 1915, only 1, 641 received pensions[17] it remained subject to revision. If a man in receipt of a pension of ten shillings a week remained incapacitated beyond a certain period of time, the payment was halved to five shillings per week. At the same time, the state insurance payment depended on the man remaining totally incapacitated. Even part-time work would result in an automatic cessation of payment.[18] There was, therefore, simply no incentive for a man to submit to treatment and, once out of the army, there was no means of compelling him to do so. In addition, the waiting lists for sanatorium treatment were a cause of sufficient concern to warrant discussion in Parliament.[19] For those writing in The Lancet, the solution seemed obvious. Both Drs Lumsden[20] and Harries agreed that delaying a soldier’s discharge until after they had received a course of institutional treatment would prevented the release of infected, and potentially infectious patients, into the general population and ensure that the treatment of the individual was not abandoned too early which again helped to prevent infection spreading within the patient’s own family. Where cases were judged to be terminal, Harries recommended that the patient should be retained until the end.[21] At the point of discharge, it was further recommended that patients be discharged not to home but to an agricultural or horticultural environment on the basis that, in addition to consolidating the “cure” already begun, such an enterprise would also provide skills that would ultimately aid “arrested” patients into work.[22] While Harries’ suggestion that these patients could then receive assistance to remain on the land at the end of their treatment carries something of the odour of the leper colony, there was some belief that an outdoor life of fresh air and hard work did benefit tuberculosis patients.[23] William Ostler, sensitive to the fact that even open cases of tuberculosis had been passed fit for active service by medical examiners, argued for a more thorough examination of recruits with doubtful cases being referred to the TB expert of the district for further examination.[24] He did not explicitly advocate treatment before discharge but insisted that doubtful cases[25] be put before army experts and urged the establishment of a National Organisation dedicated to the welfare of tuberculous soldiers with a local branch in every district. He envisaged that this organisation should work with Local Government Board representatives and Insurance Commissioners to organise the aftercare of tuberculous soldiers and to campaign for better accommodation. It is perhaps surprising that the treatment of tuberculosis was given so much attention at a time of war, yet the reference to the question of tuberculosis as the Nation’s Greatest Domestic War[26] was justified. Tuberculosis took a severe annual toll on the working population of Great Britain in peacetime and, particularly in 1916 when universal conscription was becoming ever more likely[27], with all that entailed for previously exempted men[28] it became ever more important to ensure that those who joined up in defence of their country were properly looked after. In contradiction of Thomas Dormandy’s suggestion that the problem of tuberculosis was considered to be a civilian and therefore an irrelevant problem,[29] much was written on the subject by medical men at the time, and their tone was one of some urgency, about the poor state of sanatoria facilities available to patients and the quality of housing that was considered so crucial in the fight against infection.[30] It is to the credit of the government at the time that they took swift notice of these appeals. In his article in The Lancet on 20 October 1917, Arthur Newsholme, KCB, MD noted, in response to the article that appeared in The Lancet in May 1916[31], that, after consultation with the Army Council, the Local Government Board had contacted the local authorities to request the involvement of tuberculosis officers in the examination of military recruits and it is notable that the Ministry of Pensions paid £10 to the Insurance Commissioners for every sailor and soldier discharged with tuberculosis to ensure priority treatment.[32] However, in the same address, Colonel Sir A Griffith-Boscawen, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions made it clear that, even though he agreed that the provision of sanatoria was insufficient, it was not the job of the Ministry of Pensions to address the problem.[33] Therefore, as the Great War drew to a close, the battle for adequate care of these once-enlisted men continued to be fought. I would remark that the sacrifices of these men will not have been made in vain if they teach us that those who have had the misfortune to contract tuberculosis may be worthy of a better fate than to be segregated, but let it be understood there can be no worse place for an uncured tuberculous patient in war time than the Army.[34] [1] W. Owen “Dulce Et Decorum Est” line 6 in C. Martin, War Poems (London 2004) [2] W Ostler, “An Address on the Tuberculous Soldier” in The Lancet Volume 188, Issue 4849, August 5, 1916, pp. 220-221 [3] Dormandy, The White Death A History of Tuberculosis (London, 1999) p. 224 [4] No Author, “Pulmonary Tuberculosis in the Army” in The Lancet Volume 187, Issue 4827, March 4, 1916, pp. 519-520 [5] A contested term “arrested” being considered the proper word. See letter from F. Clifford in response to “Tuberculosis and the War” in The Lancet Volume 189, Issue 4885, May 5, 1917, p. 700 [6] E. H. R Harries, “The Problem of the Tuberculous Soldier” The Lancet, Volume 188, Issue 4866, December 2, 1916 pp. 939-940 [7] No Author, “Discharge from the Army owing to Tuberculosis” The Lancet, Volume 187, Issue 4838, May 20, 1916 p. 1050 [8] No author, “Pulmonary Tuberculosis in the Army” in The Lancet Volume 187, Issue 4827, March 4, 1916, pp. 519-520 [9] No Author, “Discharge from the Army owing to Tuberculosis” The Lancet, Volume 187, Issue 4838, May 20, 1916 p. 1050 [10] W Ostler, “An Address on the Tuberculous Soldier” in The Lancet Volume 188, Issue 4849, August 5, 1916, pp. 220-221 [11] Ibid [12] T. Dormandy, The White Death A History of Tuberculosis (London, 1999) p. 118-119 [13] W Ostler, “An Address on the Tuberculous Soldier” in The Lancet, Volume 188, Issue 4849, August 5, 1916, pp. 220-221 [14] Ibid [15] E. H. R Harries, “The Problem of the Tuberculous Soldier” The Lancet, Volume 188, Issue 4866, December 2, 1916 pp. 939-940 [16] Ibid [17] W Ostler, “An Address on the Tuberculous Soldier” in The Lancet Volume 188, Issue 4849, August 5, 1916, pp. 220-221 [18] E. H. R Harries, “The Problem of the Tuberculous Soldier” The Lancet, Volume 188, Issue 4866, December 2, 1916 pp. 939-940 [19] Hansard, 28 May 1918 [20] No Author, “Tuberculosis and the War” The Lancet, Volume 189, Issue 4877, February 17, 1917, p. 268 [21] E. H. R Harries, “The Problem of the Tuberculous Soldier” The Lancet, Volume 188, Issue 4866, December 2, 1916 pp. 939-940 [22] Ibid [23] A. Newsholme, “The Relations of Tuberculosis to War Conditions. With remarks on some aspects of the Administrative Control of Tuberculosis” in The Lancet, Volume 190, Issue 4912, October 20, 1917, pp. 591-595 [24] W Ostler, “An Address on the Tuberculous Soldier” in The Lancet Volume 188, Issue 4849, August 5, 1916, pp. 220-221 [25] Ibid [26] Ibid [27] A. Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War (Cambridge 2014) [28] F. Clifford, “Tuberculosis and the War [reply]” The Lancet, Volume 189, Issue 4888, May 5, 1917, p. 700 [29] T. Dormandy, The White Death A History of Tuberculosis (London, 1999) p. 225 [30] A. Newsholme, “The Relations of Tuberculosis to War Conditions. With remarks on some aspects of the Administrative Control of Tuberculosis” in The Lancet, Volume 190, Issue 4912, October 20, 1917, p. 594 [31] No Author, “Tuberculosis and the War” The Lancet, Volume 189, Issue 4877, February 17, 1917, p. 268 [32] Hansard, 28 May 1918 [33] Ibid [34] E. E. Prest, “Sanatorium Treatment and Military Service: an analysis of 47 cases” in The Lancet Volume 194, Issue 5006, August 9, 1919, p. 241 |