Although the cross of the early Middle Ages is often considered to have carried apotropaic force, in this essay I wish to emphasize its other powers. That is, I would argue that the sign of the cross does not just ward off evil, it also is actively engaged with the Christian devotee in shaping a space within which to welcome salvation as a thing/not-thing. In one aspect of such force, I have previously called the sign of the cross a ‘lively sign’, just as Paulinus of Nola called it in relic form the ‘invulnerable sign’; here I will extend its attributes, arguing that this is an object and graphic mark that has the capacity to seal and close space, but also to create, open, and activate it.

I take inspiration from the artistic oeuvre of Joseph Beuys (1921–86), who recognized all of these qualities of the cross. Beuys’s earliest commissions as a sculptor in postwar Germany were physical crosses; in later work he both structured performances with crosses and cross shapes, and marked multiples and drawings with a stamp-like use of the braunkreuz (a designation that evoked dried blood), indicating that he considered them significant elements of his overall artistic project. Beuys also used the cross in partial form, almost like a letter, a sideways tau. Following Beuys’s lead, we recognize another aspect of the cross, this time discovered in the artistic action of making the sign: the cross both as a gesture and as a materially manufactured object. Given the anonymity of most early medieval artists, this last quality has been all too easy to overlook.

In the earliest Christian textual sources, the cross found a somewhat limited characterization as a sign, semion or signum. This terminology can be found in the narratives of the Greek New Testament, in Eusebius’s account concerning the political and historical importance of the cross to Constantine, and in the commentary and theology of the early Christian Fathers. Gerhard Ladner has argued that the medieval world generally preferred the word ‘sign’ to ‘symbol’, but the status of the cross as sign rather than as object or symbol illustrates more than a general principle of medieval culture: considered as a sign, the cross was able to develop tremendous flexibility of meaning.

One great and rather bizarre mystery haunts the Pro Arte's recording history—that of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet K. 581, and its association with Benny Goodman. During the 1930s, that great jazz musician was developing an interest in classical music literature, with the Mozart Quintet as his first target. For their part, the Pro Arte performed the work a reported eight times over the years, at least twice with the distinguished clarinetist Louis Cahuzac.

The performance catalogue compiled by Anne Van Malderen asserts that the quartet played it twice in public with Goodman: first on July 10, 1935, at Mills College, and then on February 12, 1938. Those reports are apparently incorrect, for there is no evidence that the Pro Arte ever played the work with Goodman in public performance. But Van Malderen also reports that Goodman and the Pro Arte made an incomplete recording of it with Goodman in “early 1936,” at the Abbey Road studios in London (pp. 486–87).

Now, it is clear from Van Malderen's own performance registry that such a dating is of insecure credibility. In January 1936 the Pro Arte was involved in “overlapping” Beethoven Quartet cycles in Belgium. To be sure, the quartet was in the London area in February 1936, and in one concert played this Mozart Quintet, if not with Goodman as soloist.

The literature on Goodman, however, offers conflicting information. There are no references to Goodman ever playing with the Pro Arte in public; the Van Malderen reports of such on two occasions may be regarded as quite dubious. As to the ill-fated recording session, we are given a very different picture.

According to the jazz recording producer and critic John Hammond— also violist of the Coolidge Quartet—he himself urged Goodman to investigate classical literature. (Hammond thought it would be healthy to build bridges between jazz and classical music making, an idea he later concluded was a mistake.) Goodman knew virtually nothing of classical music, and had never heard—or heard of—the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, which Hammond suggested for a start. Around the spring of 1935, Hammond pulled together three other New York string players (himself on viola), and for three weeks, once a week, they rehearsed the quintet with Goodman.

It is no great surprise that frames are usually studied in relation to images. Theoretical examinations of the frame and practices of framing have largely concentrated on images, and have developed theoretical observations and ideas out of the perceived relationship between the picture, its frame and the world of the viewer. The early medieval codex allows us a slightly different perspective on the frame. Here, we are just as likely to find pages with framed script as pages with framed images, or we may even find both, arranged as a diptych across a single opening. Despite the fairly substantial body of studies on the status or role of the frame and closely related elements or areas of the page (such as borders, boundaries, edges and margins) in the Middle Ages, the practice of graphically framing text has not to my knowledge received specific attention. Explanations of why text and, in particular, lettered beginnings are framed in the early Middle Ages usually refer us back to the text–image relationship. The disadvantage of these kinds of argument is that, conceptually, they turn the frame into something added, an accessory, and enforce the distinction between the categories text and image, which, as the chapters in this volume show, is an artificial and problematic distinction to make for early medieval manuscripts. Such arguments also simplify the functions of frames in framed text pages, which can vary even within a single manuscript. Stating that the frame treats the text like an image, or awards it the status or effect of an image, does not explain anything, but rather raises additional questions concerning the relations between text, image, letter and material page.

Studying the interactions between letter and frame offers an opportunity to foreground the frame as a spatially relevant graphic principle, and to ask whether the status and function of the frame are the same regardless of whether it is texts or images that are being framed. In a seminal article, Meyer Schapiro suggests an equality between the fields for text and image in this respect: ‘The same properties of the field as a space with a latent expressiveness are exploited in printed and painted verbal signs.’ As an example, he refers to ‘the hierarchy of words on the title page of a book or on a poster’, but does not elaborate. Given the prominence of framed script, this deserves some further investigation.

Death, doubt, empowerment, grief, hope, intimacy, joy, life, loss, pain, presence, release, salvation, separation, subordination, suffering, validation: together these terms summarize the complexity of motherhood as an experience for medieval women as it has been reconstructed in this book through work with selected medieval sculptures. This complexity, expressed most clearly in the contradictions contained in certain pairs of these terms (empowerment/subordination, death/life, grief/joy, intimacy/ separation, and so on), may have marked the experiences of individual women, over one or more pregnancies, and would have marked the cumulative experiences of women as a group.

A young woman in Reims in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, who worked in the market in front of the cathedral, might have encountered its Annunciation and Visitation sculptures during her first pregnancy and used them to think about the ongoing changes in her body and the upcoming change in her identity once she became a mother (Figs. 2–3). A few months later, she might have looked back at the Visitation sculptures and recognized in their elaborate forms the celebration of her new motherhood during her Churching: then, looking across the space of the portal, she might have seen in the Presentation sculptures her husband's assertion of his power within their marriage during the post-Churching feast (Figs. 5 and 7). Over the years, through repeated pregnancies, the Annunciation, Visitation, and Presentation sculptures may have come to represent for her the highs and lows of marriage and motherhood. Years later, as a widow, perhaps now running her husband's stall in the market, she might have recognized in Elizabeth's rich visual form and mature face her own newly independent status. Another young woman who had decided to become a beguine, and who came to the cathedral for Candlemas, might have recognized in the Annunciation, Visitation, and Presentation sculptures instead her developing sense of an interior encounter with the divine. Or perhaps the first woman decided to become a beguine as a widow and now saw in these sculptures both a continuity from her earlier life as a wife and mother, in thinking of the divine presence within her as like that of a child, and a difference, in her transformed relationship to male, now clerical, authority.

The study of illuminated manuscripts has grown steadily since the staging by Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell of the first exhibition devoted to them, held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London in 1908. That exhibition stemmed from Cockerell’s background as a collector, curator and connoisseur, in a tradition that stretched back to his time assisting John Ruskin, and indeed beyond, to the post-Reformation period, when the bibliophiles Archbishop Matthew Parker and Sir Robert Cotton initiated revived appreciation of the manuscripts’ aesthetic appeal. Illumination has accordingly entered the canon of art-historical studies, but has often teetered uneasily on the cusp between the fine and decorative arts. Figural narrative and established iconographies were the principal areas of interest at first – effectively, viewing illuminations as paintings in miniature. Meanwhile, study of the texts contained in such books continued apace, and the work of deciphering them through the formal and typological analysis of their scripts (palaeography) commenced in earnest with the publication of Jean Mabillon’s De re diplomatica in 1681. An appreciation of the significance of the manuscripts’ physical construction was inaugurated by Bernard de Montfaucon in his Palaeographia graeca of 1708 and elevated to disciplinary status as ‘codicology’ with the work of scholars such as Destrez and Delaissé during the mid-twentieth century.

In recent decades, a more holistic approach has evolved, with scholars collaborating or ranging across these disciplines to form a more rounded view of the socio-historical context of such complex artefacts, and with the establishment of book history as a new arrow in the quiver of academe. A fuller appreciation has also grown of the sophisticated and complex ways in which text and image inter-relate, and of the essential roles of navigation, articulation and interpretation played by what has traditionally been seen – sometimes rather pejoratively – as ‘decoration’, whether major or minor. The application of neuropsychological and cognitive theories to the exploration of medieval art has also rendered us more receptive to the semiotics and symbolism of abstract graphic forms and to the artistic interplay between iconic and aniconic, figurative and abstract. The cognitive strategies of the medievals themselves have also been examined through the application of their own early tools, such as exegesis, allegory, tropology, typology and multivalence.

Redefinitions

The current phase of the Pro Arte Quartet's history began with another major personnel transformation, with both the violin chairs occupied by new players. They came with close prior associations: they had been, respectively, concertmaster and principal second violin of the same orchestra, the Wichita Symphony.

Both before and since his joining the Pro Arte, David Perry was building a career of national dimensions as one of America's finest violinists of our time. He acquired a particular reputation for precision of playing and absolute accuracy of intonation—one colleague quipped that Perry “has never visited the spaces between the notes.” He studied at Juilliard with Dorothy DeLay, won notable prizes, and pursued a lively career as an ensemble leader, with only marginal activities as a soloist. He became concertmaster of several orchestras, including that at the Aspen Festival, and he was active with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. While in Wichita he was first violinist of the local Fairmont Quartet, and also taught on the faculty of Wichita State University.

Born in Reno, Nevada, Suzanne Beia was something of a childhood prodigy. She served as concertmaster for several orchestras, not only in her native city but in others around the country. She has also worked in chamber ensembles, notably the Sedgwick String Quartet in Wichita. Because of her limited academic record, she was not given full faculty status, but instead has fifty-percent status at the University of Wisconsin for performing and coaching as an artist in residence—a status that all members of the quartet hold for half of their budgetary positions. One feature that was established at the outset of the Perry years—and at his insistence—is that performance activities were to be suspended during the summer months. The few summer ventures that were undertaken represent exceptions that prove the rule. In effect, the Pro Arte has become an ensemble for the academic year only. (Perry is active at Aspen, Colorado; both he and Chisholm also perform at Door County's Midsummer Music, while she has also become involved with other summer festivals, notably the famous one at Marlboro, VT; Beia plays with summer groups in Madison, while Karp has involvements in Colorado and Hawaii.)

The world of music making into which the Pro Arte Quartet was born and in which it operated was well established at the ensemble's inception. The instrumental types and ensemble combinations had been clearly established over generations, as had the forms of ensemble writing. A repertoire of working literature was also being developed, and our quartet made important contributions to this. Its rise and flourishing was accompanied by the operations of many continuing quartet ensembles of significant stature—its siblings and rivals—in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of groups, many of which fell by the wayside as the Pro Arte continued to thrive

These factors provide an important backdrop to our story of the Pro Arte Quartet, and so it is perhaps useful at the outset to say a few words about them, to establish a context.

What has become accepted over some two-and-a-half centuries as the “string quartet” is a somewhat eccentric combination of instruments, if one thinks about it. We expect a vocal ensemble or a chorus normally to consist of the soprano-alto-tenor-bass combination of voice parts (SATB). As it evolved, however, this particular mustering of the violin family amounts to two trebles (or sopranos), an alto and a baritone, but no true bass. On paper, that combination might seem somewhat top-heavy. Nevertheless, it is, in function, quite flexible. The second violin can pair with either the first or with the viola; the viola can also pair with the cello, while the latter, with its wide range, can both reach high in pitch and offer a full-bodied bass line. It is a remarkably adaptable combination, a fact that has doubtless contributed to its enduring acceptance.

The flexibility of the string quartet formulation is furthered, of course, by the frequent introduction of a fifth instrument, for quintet combinations. The piano is the most common such addition, but wind instruments (such as clarinet) have also found favor. The addition of another stringed instrument, either another viola or another cello, has helped produce some extraordinarily fine string quintets. The addition of both has generated the string sextet, which allows fascinating rethinking of the quartet texture. While the string-quartet configuration can thus be carried beyond itself, that conventional foursome has remained the firm focus of our chamber music.

What's in a Name?

There is an old joke, told in many forms, but perhaps best embodied in the one placing it at George Washington's estate, Mount Vernon. The story has it that visitors there were shown an axe and were told by their guide that this was the original axe with which young George chopped down the cherry tree. The visitors observed that the axe looked quite fresh and new. Well, explained the guide, you had to understand that it had been given three new heads and five new handles over the years. But it was still the same axe!

Applying this story to the Pro Arte Quartet situation reflects some mixed truths, amid mixed questions. Many commentators (especially European) consider the Pro Arte Quartet to have come to an end with the death of Alphonse Onnou in 1940, and the American continuation of it to be spurious or irrelevant. Both in membership and in character, they had lost their Belgian identity, and were no longer the Quatuor Pro Arte of Brussels that the musical world had known for two decades.

It is true that membership and character would change. But such circumstances were hardly unique or isolated. Many long-lived groups, most notably the Budapest Quartet, went through exactly the same changes, but they were not considered extinct when their initial configuration came to an end. The introduction of one or more new members into a quartet does, of course, involve tests of assimilation and adjustment, but these have been carried out successfully in so many cases, and none of them have given grounds for denying the reality of their continuities—with the Pro Arte or other quartets.

One concert reviewer made a pointed comparison of the Pro Arte with certain creatures in nature—starfish and such that are able to reproduce lost members and thus continue uninterrupted life.

In what continuity-deniers would have as their “last” year, one personnel change had already been carried out: Warwick Evans, a non- Belgian, was substituted for the absent Robert Maas (though, it was presumed, temporarily). The dying Onnou was replaced by Antonio Brosa. A Spaniard by birth, Brosa was an early violin prodigy. He studied in Brussels with Mathieu Crickboom (whose quartet had given the premiere of Debussy's Quartet).

Formation, Definition, and Patronage

The Brussels Conservatory of Music was founded in 1832 as an academy of the state, contemporaneously with the creation of the independent Kingdom of Belgium as that state. Among its earliest directors were the Belgian musicologists François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871) and François-Auguste Gevaert (1828–1908), whose successive regimes covered the first seventy-six years of the school's existence, long dominating the musical life of Brussels.

A violin department was established under Lambert Massart. His successor (1843–52) was the eminent violinist and composer Charles-Auguste de Bériot (1802–70), who established what came to be called the Franco-Belgian school of violin playing, based on the traditions and style of Paganini. This school of the violin emerged as the only rival on the international scene to the so-called Russian School of St. Petersburg. The influence of each “school” was great and widespread.

Massart's pupil Henri Vieuxtemps led that faculty department in his turn, and was teacher of Eugène Ysaÿe, who followed the Polish virtuoso Hendryk Wieniawski. Succeeding Ysaÿe as director was César Thomson. In subsequent generations, the violin faculty included André Gertler and Arthur Grumiaux. (Since 1967, the Conservatory has been divided into two institutions, one for instruction in French, the other in Flemish.)

With such a faculty, the Conservatory nurtured several generations of gifted young musicians, who were drawn to it as providing the foundation of their careers. Among them were those who became founders of the Quatuor Pro Arte.

The eldest of them was Germain Prévost, who was born in 1891. His father was a tanner, but the family was actively musical and encouraging. Arthur, the first of the three sons, trained as a clarinetist and became an important figure in Belgian musical life. Germain was the second son, and in his turn became an admired (and money-earning) clarinetist. He studied violin, and at age thirteen he began to teach himself the viola, which was to become his true love. With such diverse foundations, Germain secured entry to the Brussels Conservatory in 1909, at age eighteen, as a clarinet student. Through great diligence he worked up his skills on the viola and advanced rapidly

This chapter concerns how the non-narrative components of Byzantine manuscripts – marginal signs, frames, headpieces and painted initials – structure the reader’s understanding of the narrative components: both the text itself and, when relevant, the miniatures. It focuses on a single manuscript that contains all of the relevant constituent parts, the well-known Paris Gregory in Paris, BnF, cod. gr. 510.

The text is a copy of the sermons of the fourth-century Cappadocian Church Father, Gregory of Nazianzos. The manuscript’s completion can be dated on the basis of its opening imperial portraits to the years of the reign of Basil I, 867–86, and more precisely still to sometime between late 879 and mid-882, after Basil’s sons had both been elevated to the rank of co-emperor (as they are designated in the inscriptions), but before Leo’s marriage in the winter of 882 and the death of Basil’s wife, Eudokia, which followed soon thereafter.

With five prefatory and unpaginated miniatures followed by 464 folios of text, each approximately 410 mm high and 300 mm wide, the Paris Gregory is a huge book; to give a sense of scale, the Vienna Dioskourides (c. 512), another famously hefty Greek book weighing in at 14 lb, has 491 folios, and so is slightly longer than the Gregory, and at 330 mm slightly broader, but it is also less high (380 mm). Nothing else comes close. The Paris Gregory is larger than the other well-known big luxury codices of the sixth century, and it is far longer and bigger than the roughly contemporary Khludov Psalter and the heavily decorated tenth-century manuscript now known as the Paris Psalter (see Table 1). It is a manuscript devoted to displaying conspicuous consumption: Paris cod. gr. 510 incorporates fortysix full-page miniatures; the scribes wrote in the by-then old-fashioned uncial script – which is larger and takes longer to write than the recently introduced minuscule – at a stately and regular forty lines per column, with two columns per page, thus ‘wasting’ as much precious parchment as possible; wide margins were left for scholia and so that marginal notations could be inserted, and most of these are in gold leaf, often with additional painted details.