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Ethical Record the Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 108 No. 9 £1.50 December 2003 GREAT IDEAS OF SCIENCE PRESENTED AT CONWAY HALL PETER ATKINS LECTURES ON "THE EXTRAORDINARY SIMPLICITY OF EVERYTHING" Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry and Fellow of Lincoln College at Oxford University, gave the SPES 76th CONWAY Peter Atkins MEMORIAL LECTURE in the main Conway Hall on 13 November, 2003 to a very keen and attentive audience. Besides being the author of several chemistry textbooks used throughout the world, Peter Atkins has written a number of more popular books of scientific exposition, including The Creation and The Creation Revisited. Peter Atkins has made no secret of his atheism and disdain for religion. For this reason he agreed to become an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. He much enjoys the excitement of science and fervently believes that we shall, by using science, discover the secrets of the universe, including the explanation for its origin. His most recent book is entitled "Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science"*. It opens with a photo of the detached middle finger of Galileo's right hand, which relic is now in the Museo di Storia della Scienza. The finger indicates that the direction taken by Galileo, i.e. experimental science, is the path to true knowledge. The ten ideas simply and expertly expounded in the book (and summarised in the lecture) were: evolution, DNA, energy, atoms, entropy, symmetry, quanta, cosmology, spacetime and arithmetic. After the lecture, Peter adroitly answered the audience's numerous questions and continued to do so at the reception in the Library, leaving everyone with a determination to investigate 'the extraordinary simplicity of everything.' *Oxford University Press, (2003) ISBN 0 19 860664 8 (hb) £20. THE GENESIS OF THE SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS Alan Bartley 3 EMPOWERING WOMEN - Report on The IHEU Conference Anna Behan 9 POLAND - TRANSFORALITION IN A PATRIARCHAL WORLD Katarzyna Szumlewicz 10 SECRETS, LIES AND WORKS OF ART - The Witt Library Dr Anthea Brook 12 HAS HUMANISM ANY FUTURE? David Warden 13 OUT OF THIS WORLD - An Examination of Modern Physics and Cosmology Hyman Frankel 21 SOME NOTES ON EXISTENTIALISM Tom Rubens 22 FUTURE EVENTS SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8034 Fax: 020 72428036 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] Officers Chairman of the GC: Terry Mullins. Hon. Representative of the GC: Don Liversedge. Vice Chairman: John Rayner. Registrar: Edmund McArthur. Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel: 020 7242 8034 Librarian1Programme Coordinator:JenniferJeynes M.Sc. Tel: 020 7242 8037 Hall Manager: Peter Vlachos MA. For Hall bookings: Tel: 020 7242 8032 Caretakers' Office: Tel: 020 7242 8033 New Staff Members Carina Kelsey, Lettings Assistant Victoria Le Fevre, Administrative and clerical Assistant New Members Michael Hutchinson, East Barnet - John Burgess, West Dulwich YULETIDE PANTOMIME, 14 December 2003 Hamlet, Act VI. The Inquest A pantomime for adults, based loosely on Shakespeare's notes for a sixth act. Fortinbras Prince of Norway - Peter Vlachos, Trog his secretary - John Rayner Horatio a Danish gentleman - Terry Mullins, Julian an actor - Victoria Le Fevre Sandy another actor - Carina Kelsey While Victoria was debating whether one more sip of the mulled wine would be the correct amount to kill the stage fright, Carina, holding a havana cigar, was frantically looking for her own version of the script with the red highlighted lines... Peter who had been there before reflected total confidence, and at the last minute, our natural actor, Terry Mullins, struggled to find the right page. And John Rayner (scriptwriter) frustrated by the shortness of his character could not help repeating again and again after moi (the director) the introduction to the scene of Hamlet and the names of the cast. We all enjoyed the fun. Well done chaps! The encore will have to wait for next year. Marina Ingham SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and the renowned South Place Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society's journal, Ethical Record, is issued ten times a year. Funerals and Memorial meetings may be arranged. The annual subscription is in 8 (£12 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65). 2 Ethical Record, December, 2003 PEOPLE'S CONCERTS AND THE GENESIS OF THE SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERT SOCIETY Alan Bartley Lecture to the Ethical Society, 26 October 2003 Over the years the name of South Place has become associated as much with its series of Sunday evening concerts as with the activities of the Ethical Society. And the very fact that its chamber concerts have continued for 123 years speaks for itself. This talk will focus on the early days of those concerts; how they came into being, the audiences that came to hear them, how the concerts survived financial difficulties, and a little of the music that was performed and the instrumentalists who played it. The Sunday chapel meetings had always included a musical element, but with the appointment of the humanist Moncure Conway as Minister came an enhanced interest in chapel music. A Music Sub-committee was appointed, which discussed the organist's proposals and made recommendations to the Chapel Committee regarding the engagement of choristers and the music for the services. Clearly high standards were sought, the minutes recording an application to the Royal Academy of Music for a first soprano, and in 1881 the noted Beethoven scholar J. South Shedlock was appointed choirmaster and organist. The People's Concert Society But the chapel was also hosting concerts of secular music, as a surviving programme for a dramatic cantata Peace and War testifies. This programme records the 26th series of such events, suggesting that secular music had been a regular feature of chapel life since 1858. In 1880 Society members with an interest in instrumental music arranged for the chapel to host a series of Sunday evening chamber concerts presented by the People's Concert Society. The scene now changes to nearby Whitechapel, where Samuel Barnett was vicar of St. Jude's Church. The Reverend Barnett was a progressive thinker whose sense of social duty led him to take up residence among the poor, introducing them to civilising influences by means of lectures, concerts and outings. His diary for 1878 reports: Very much as the result of the concerts held in our schoolroom, the People's Concert Society has been formed, its object being to spread the taste for high-class music. Victorian cultural philanthropy was based on the idea that art was a force for good, but the founders of the People's Concert Society declared no 'improving' agenda. Their aim was simply 'to increase the popularity of good music' An article in The Times recalling the founders of the Society and their objectives said: 'They made no fuss about it. They did not march under the banner of "charity...or of "education"...; neither did they invent any slogan "Music for the million" or the like'. Nevertheless, the organisers' sympathies clearly lay with lower-class audiences. At the PCS's first general meeting in 1879 the chairman stated that ' the society aims at creating a taste for good chamber music among those who have hitherto had little or no opportunity of hearing it'. The early years of the People's Concert Society were essentially exploratory, trying various venues for suitability, testing the receptivity of audiences, and experimenting with the timing of concerts and admission arrangements. The earliest known report of a Ethical Record, December, 2003 3 PCS concert dates from 1879, and reveals the determination, maintained throughout the Society's life, not to compromise on the quality of the main executants: On Tuesday evening...an excellent Concert was given by the RC.S. in St. Mary's Schoolroom, Whitechapel...Most of the performers were amateurs; but valuable professional help was afforded them by Hen- Otto Peiniger as violinist, and Miss Mary Carmichael, as solo pianist. There was a large and highly appreciative audience. Otto Peiniger, then in his forties, had been a pupil of the great violinist Joachim and regularly received complimentary reviews for his playing at West End venues. From Whitechapel the PCS extended its activities to Chelsea, where they gave concerts at the radical Eleusis Club and, in the following year, in the Chelsea Vestry Hall and Skinner Street Schoolroom in Bishopsgate, both halls accommodating around 800 people, but attempts to woo an audience at venues in Hatton Garden and Notting Hill proved disappointing, the local residents mostly too poor to pay anything at all. No Selling On A Sunday But in 1880, towards the end of the second season, the PCS essayed three concerts at the South Place chapel and the enthusiastic response, with a reported 1,100 attending the final recital, encouraged the Society to embark on a fortnightly series there the following season. The Sunday evening concert having drawn the biggest audience, it was decided to give subsequent South Place concerts on Sunday evenings. The sale of concert tickets on the Sabbath being forbidden by law, a voluntary leaving collection was taken at the door.
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