The British Male Voice Choir: A History and Contemporary Assessment

Secular male voice choral singing in Britain as a self-regulated, self-financed musical and social organization is the basis of this study. The opening chapters examine the form, repertoire and composers of, respectively, the catch and the glee, in the context of the gentlemen's meetings at which the music was performed. Whether at the catch-singing in the homes of late seventeenth century Oxford clergy or at the Georgian club where glees (with alto lead) held sway, it was educated men from the upper and middle strata of British society who were involved and in terms of organization and repertoire, these meetings are presented as antecedents of what, in the early years of the present century, became the male voice choir. The influences of protestant churches, changing social conditions, musical fashion, choral competitions and education are shown to combine in widening the social range within choir membership leading to public popularity and, through improved standardst,of respect from the music profession during the first half of this century. The involvement of choirs in competitions is examined in detail in Chapter 4, this area of activity providing an enormous stimulus to their musical and social well-being. The chronological structure is completed with comment on post-war musical retrenchment and partial ossification. Chapter 5 also reviews the detailed statistics on contemporary British male choirs collected in the author's national survey carried out over a three-yeapr eriod( 1988-91 ). The repertoire of original music is discussed in the subsequent chapter, supported by 64 illustrations with reference made to 250 works by over 120 composers. Finally, a comparative study places current British male choir work within a European context. Discussion on the future concentrates on problems of recruitment and implications for the survival of this neglected arm of the British choral scene

Genome-wide trans-ancestry meta-analysis provides insight into the genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes susceptibility

To access publisher's full text version of this article click on the hyperlink at the bottom of the pageTo further understanding of the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes (T2D) susceptibility, we aggregated published meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), including 26,488 cases and 83,964 controls of European, east Asian, south Asian and Mexican and Mexican American ancestry. We observed a significant excess in the directional consistency of T2D risk alleles across ancestry groups, even at SNPs demonstrating only weak evidence of association. By following up the strongest signals of association from the trans-ethnic meta-analysis in an additional 21,491 cases and 55,647 controls of European ancestry, we identified seven new T2D susceptibility loci. Furthermore, we observed considerable improvements in the fine-mapping resolution of common variant association signals at several T2D susceptibility loci. These observations highlight the benefits of trans-ethnic GWAS for the discovery and characterization of complex trait loci and emphasize an exciting opportunity to extend insight into the genetic architecture and pathogenesis of human diseases across populations of diverse ancestry.Canadian Institutes of Health Research Medical Research Council UK G0601261 Mexico Convocatoria SSA/IMMS/ISSSTE-CONACYT 2012-2 clave 150352 IMSS R-2011-785-018 CONACYT Salud-2007-C01-71068 US National Institutes of Health DK062370 HG000376 DK085584 DK085545 DK073541 DK085501 Wellcome Trust WT098017 WT090532 WT090367 WT098381 WT081682 WT085475info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/20141