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Boarding school statistics and personnel after 1634 The second half of the seventeenth century was the period in which the St. Thomas School most resolutely pursued its mission to be a ‘music school’ as set forth in the school regulations of 1634, and as a result came to be a byword for excellence as a top-notch producer of trained musicians. In these years the number of Thomaners who went on to become professional musicians was legion. The most prominent graduates were the later St. Thomas School cantor Johann Schelle (enrolled at the school in 1665); the ‘inventor’ of German opera, Reinhard Keiser (enrolled 1685; appointed prefect of the First Cantorey 1692; plate 22); the Darmstadt court capellmeister Christoph Graupner (enrolled 1695), the Dresden court capellmeister Johann David Heinichen (enrolled 1696), and the Merseburg court capellmeister Johann Theodor Romhildt (enrolled 1697). At no other time did the St. Thomas School produce so many first-rate musicians. With the school's growing fame, the attractiveness of a place at the boarding school also increased. Almost every week musically trained boys from Saxony, but also from Thuringia and even more distant locales, arrived at the school to audition in the hope of getting on the waiting list that offered such promising career prospects. Countless entries in Rector Thomasius's journal attest to this lively coming and going in the late 1670s and early 1680s. The boys who were admitted were on average fourteen years old (so their voices had not yet changed – the average age for the onset of puberty in the seventeenth century may have been as late as sixteen or even seventeen) and were pledged to an average stay of five to six years (with the option to stay longer, plate 21). But above all it is the St. Thomas School matriculation book, which has survived complete and intact from 1640 onward, that shows that the town council did not (at first) resume the practice of requiring the school's leadership to admit great numbers of impoverished Leipzig boys, who were proverbially unmusical (p. 98). Despite the hardships of the Thirty Years War, the documented share of the town's children at the boarding school in the years 1640–1657 of Tobias Michael's cantorate (1631–1657) was about 9.6 percent (18 out 187 boys altogether).

Bach's letter to Erdmann In the fall of 1730, the forty-five-year-old St. Thomas school cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, took up his pen in order to write a letter to his old schoolmate, Georg Erdmann, with whom he had attended school in Ohrdruf. In 1700, the two had travelled together to Luneburg, where they had both enrolled in the St. Michaelis school. Erdmann had gone on to study law, and in 1718 had become Russia's diplomatic representative in Danzig. In 1726, after a long pause, Erdmann attempted to resume contact with Bach, asking for news of his Fatalitaten, i.e., the main events of his life over the last two decades. But the St. Thomas cantor let their correspondence fall by the wayside again after just one short letter – probably on account of ‘his many activities’ that scarcely left time enough even for ‘the most necessary correspondence’ – and in 1730, Bach still owed Erdmann the news he had been asked for in 1726. Now, on October 28, 1730, Bach informed Erdmann that his familial situation was satisfactory. By now he had seven children from two marriages (four sons and three daughters); all of them were ‘born musicians’, with whom he could present vocal and instrumental concerts, especially because his second wife, Anna Magdalena, ‘sings a good, clear soprano’ and his eldest daughter ‘joins in not badly’. The picture Bach drew of his professional situation was, however, completely different. His former master, Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Cothen, was a prince ‘who both loved and knew music’, for which reason Bach had believed he could live out the rest of his life in Cothen. But as fate would have it, in December 1721, the regent married a totally unmusical princess from Bernburg (his second marriage), as a result of which the prince's future ‘inclination’ to music was already in danger. And because the Leipzig cantorate had been described to Bach as ‘so favorable’, and the town had in any event offered much better educational opportunities for his sons than Cothen, in the end he had moved to Leipzig, but only after much deliberation, because ‘it did not seem at all proper to me to exchange my post as capellmeister for that of a cantor’.

Singing for endowments and the growth of the school: a causal relationship To understand why around the turn of the seventeenth century the St. Thomas School was transformed into a music school that became famous far beyond Leipzig, we must look at a passage in the new Leipzig school regulations of 1634, the first ever to be printed. The beginning of chapter VII says that a boy desiring admission to the St. Thomas School as a boarder would have to demonstrate above-average vocal and musical abilities. The passage goes on to refer to an important relationship: That the school's progress and prosperity in previous years were manifestly furthered because the boys who were selected and admitted had a greater aptitude for music than those at the St. Nicholas school and performed in both churches, at funerals and weddings, and, finally, in the rounds of street singing, is beyond any doubt. For many people, sacred music, when sung in the churches and elsewhere, gives rise to an especially intense state of devotion, which is not the least of the reasons why in former times various legacies stipulated the better provisioning of the boys in the said school, and also some people, while still living, generously made weekly or monthly donations to be used for that purpose. For that reason, it is only proper to ensure, when auditioning and admitting boys who are over twelve years of age and desire to board at the school, that they are not untutored in the art of music but are sufficiently experienced, and can perform a piece of music in an accomplished and appropriately artful manner. In other words, the Thomaners’ singing in the churches, at special occasions, and in the streets had made the school rich from performance fees and donations by the Leipzig townspeople, and in order to continue this success story, it became an iron-clad rule that the St. Thomas boarders all had to be musical. This passage in the 1634 school regulations would have read very differently had it been written three years previously.

Good times for cantors: Johann Matthias Gesner's rectorate (1730–1734) On June 6, 1730, the elders’ council met at the town hall to deal with the vacancy in the St. Thomas rectorate. Applications and recommendations had been received in great numbers. The last of these candidates, presented by Mayor Born, was the rector of the Ansbach Gymnasium, Johann Matthias Gesner (plate 51). In Born's eyes, Gesner was most qualified candidate – above all because the highestranking princely-electoral education official in Saxony, the president of the superior consistory, Heinrich Count von Bunau, would ‘praise him highly’. Gesner had been ‘informed of the conditions at the school here’ and he had promised to accept the office ‘if he were called to it legitimately’. Of course, if the Ansbach rector were to be hired, it would still be necessary to ‘ensure’ that he would accept ‘no profession’, i.e., no parallel office at the university. Christian Gottlieb Jocher, who would later be famous as a lexicographer, was also still being considered as a more or less equally qualified candidate. The first of the mayors to vote, Mayor Lange, rejected Mayor Born's candidate. He spoke emphatically in favor of Jocher or the conrector of the St. Thomas School, Hebenstreit, who was lauded on all sides, but had been declared unelectable on account of his deficient authority. The third mayor, however, Adrian Steger, jumped in to support Mayor Born. Since Hebenstreit ‘had not won the school's respect’, Steger preferred Gesner ‘most of all’, especially since the president of the superior consistory had already ‘written to Ansbach on his behalf’. In the end, all the other town council members voted for Gesner, a unanimity of opinion that also dominated the plenary session of the three councils two days later. Once again Born referred to Count von Bunau, who had praised Gesner's knowledge of foreign languages. In addition, he stressed that the agreement with the new rector regarding his not accepting a professorship at the university had to be written in such a way that Gesner would have to give up his position at the school immediately in the event of his accepting a call from the university.

The total area of woodland in Great Britain (GB) is 2.7 m hectares of which one‐third is State‐owned and two‐thirds private; total annual wood production approximates 12 m cubic meters, while total imports of forest products approximate 48 m cubic meters. Public and government interest in forests and woodlands is significant and growing. However, support for four long‐established forestry educational institutions is diminishing accompanied by a decline in the number of applicants for university and college places in forestry courses (325 in 1996 to 156 in 2003). At the same time, there is an increase in the number of institutions (44 in 2004) offering forestry‐related subjects at postgraduate, undergraduate and technical levels although many of these are minor components within wider courses of anthropology, biology, conservation, development studies, environmental studies, geography and zoology. While these are laudable, there is concern within the forestry profession at the potential decline in educatio...

Noise from aircraft ground operations often reaches residences in the vicinity of airports via grazing incidence paths that attenuate high-frequency noise more than air-to-ground propagation paths, thus increasing the relative low-frequency content of such noise with respect to overflight noise. Outdoor A-weighted noise measurements may not appropriately reflect low-frequency noise levels that can induce potentially annoying secondary emissions inside residences near runways. Contours of low-frequency noise levels were estimated in a residential area adjacent to a busy runway from multi-site measurements of composite maximum spectra of runway sideline noise in the one-third octave bands between 25 and 80 Hz, inclusive. Neighborhood residents were interviewed to determine the prevalence of annoyance attributable to runway sideline noise at frequencies below 100 Hz, and of its audible manifestations inside homes. Survey respondents highly annoyed by rattle and vibration were concentrated in areas with low-frequency sound levels due to aircraft operations in excess of 75 to 80 dB.

Behaviorally confirmed awakenings were recorded during nighttime hours for periods of approximately one month in 45 homes of 82 test participants. Measurements of awakening and of both indoor and outdoor noise exposure were made for a total of 632 subject nights near a military airfield, 783 subject nights near a civil airport, and 472 subject nights in neighborhoods with community noise exposure of nonaircraft origin. Sound exposure levels of individual noise intrusions were much more closely associated with awakenings than long‐term noise exposure levels. The slope of the relationship between awakening and sound exposure level was rather shallow, however. Although the present findings do not resemble those of laboratory studies of noise‐induced sleep interference, they are in good agreement with the results of other field studies.

While it is apparent that rare variation can play an important role in the genetic architecture of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), the contribution of common variation to the risk of developing ASD is less clear. To produce a more comprehensive picture, we report Stage 2 of the Autism Genome Project genome-wide association study, adding 1301 ASD families and bringing the total to 2705 families analysed (Stages 1 and 2). In addition to evaluating the association of individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), we also sought evidence that common variants, en masse, might affect the risk. Despite genotyping over a million SNPs covering the genome, no single SNP shows significant association with ASD or selected phenotypes at a genome-wide level. The SNP that achieves the smallest P-value from secondary analyses is rs1718101. It falls in CNTNAP2, a gene previously implicated in susceptibility for ASD. This SNP also shows modest association with age of word/phrase acquisition in ASD subjects, of interest because features of language development are also associated with other variation in CNTNAP2. In contrast, allele scores derived from the transmission of common alleles to Stage 1 cases significantly predict case status in the independent Stage 2 sample. Despite being significant, the variance explained by these allele scores was small (Vm 1). Based on results from individual SNPs and their en masse effect on risk, as inferred from the allele score results, it is reasonable to conclude that common variants affect the risk for ASD but their individual effects are modest.

Field measurements were conducted of potential sleep disturbance associated with changes in nighttime aircraft noise exposure near three airports. One study was conducted near Stapleton International Airport (DEN) and Denver International Airport (DIA) in anticipation of the closure of the former and opening of the latter. Sleep behavior was monitored in 57 homes located near runway ends at the two airports. A second study was conducted in the vicinity of DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (PDK), a large general aviation airport that expected increased nighttime flight operations due to the Olympic Games in July and August of 1996. Similar methods of measuring nighttime noise levels and sleep disturbance in the two studies were maintained over the course of 2717 and 686 subject-nights of observations, respectively. No major differences in noise-induced sleep disturbance were observed as a function of changes in nighttime aircraft noise exposure.

A field study of habituation to aircraft noise-induced sleep disturbance was conducted near DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (PDK), a large general aviation airport north of Atlanta, Georgia. Increased aircraft operations were expected in nighttime hours due to the Olympic Games in Atlanta in July/August 1996. Indoor and outdoor measurements of aircraft and other nighttime noises were made in 12 homes in a community north of PDK for a period of approximately 6 weeks, beginning 2-1/2 weeks prior to the Olympics and ending one week after their conclusion. Sleep disturbance information suitable for analysis was measured during 686 subject-nights by self-report, behaviorally-confirmed awakening (button pushes upon awakening) and sleep motility (via a wrist-worn recording accelerometer). No major differences were noted in sleep disturbance during or after the Olympics. Inclusion of data from all time periods with results of prior studies did not affect a prior dosage-response relationship between awakening and sound exposure level. A subsequent study involving an additional 117 subject-nights was undertaken to compare the sensitivity and interpretability of sleep motility measurements made in analysis epochs ranging from 2 to 30 seconds in duration. The pattern of findings of the methodological study revealed little benefit of analyzing motility measurements in short duration epochs.

On‐site and telephone opinion surveys were conducted to assess outdoor recreationists’ annoyance with aircraft overflights of wilderness areas. Although current technology for measuring noise exposure does not yet permit accurate and cost‐effective estimates of dosage‐response relationships in outdoor recreational settings, it was nonetheless possible to construct a rough relationship between estimated aircraft noise exposure and annoyance from the data of the on‐site study. In the second survey, telephone interviews were administered to another sample of outdoor recreationists within 2 weeks of their return from visits to 12 wilderness areas. The prevalence of aircraft noise‐induced annoyance (in any degree) among respondents in all wilderness areas ranged from 5% to 32%. The prevalence of a consequential degree of aircraft noise‐induced annoyance among respondents was less than 5% in all wilderness areas combined. Noise‐induced annoyance proved to be a more direct measure of the effects of aircraft overflights on recreationists than more global measures such as visit satisfaction or intent to revisit.

Two groups of 30 audiometrically screened test participants judged the relative annoyance of two comparison (variable level) signals and 30–34 standard (fixed level) signals in an adaptive paired comparison psychoacoustic study. The signal ensemble included primarily stage II and stage III aircraft overflights, as well as synthesized aircraft noise signatures. Test signals were presented for judgment as heard indoors (test 1) and outdoors (test 2), in the presence of continuous background noise, under free‐field listening conditions in an anechoic chamber. For both tests, analyses of the performance of 30 noise metrics as predictors of these annoyance judgments confirmed that the more complex metrics were generally more accurate and precise predictors than the simpler methods. EPNL was slightly less accurate and precise as a predictor of the annoyance judgments than a duration‐adjusted variant of Zwicker’s loudness level. [Research was supported by NASA, Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia.]

Pearsons, Barber, and Tabachnick (1990) have documented large differences in the findings of laboratory and home studies of the ability of noise to disturb sleep. More recently, preliminary analyses of data collected in a large‐scale, in‐home study of sleep disturbance [Ollerhead et al. (1992)] suggest a lower probability of awakening than indicated by a dosage–response relationship recommended by Federal Interagency Committee on Noise [FICON (1992)]. The U.S. Air Force is currently conducting an in‐home study of sleep disturbance, intended in part to clarify several issues not fully resolved in prior work. These include the definition of sleep disturbance and the temporal linkage between noise exposure and sleep disturbance. The rationale, design, and progress of the Air Force study are described.

Various ‘‘corrections’’ have been suggested to measures of high‐energy impulsive sounds to account for their seemingly anomalous annoyance, some on the basis of the findings of studies that may not have accurately reproduced the low‐frequency content of high‐energy impulses. The present study measured rates of growth of annoyance of impulsive and nonimpulsive sounds by adaptive paired comparisons of the annoyance of five variable level signals and 29 impulsive and nonimpulsive fixed level signals. All test sounds were presented for judgment in a specially designed low‐frequency test facility. When the annoyance of an aircraft flyover was compared to that of a low‐frequency band of noise and of sonic booms accompanied by rattle, the relative rates of growth of annoyance were not much different from 1:1. When the annoyance of sonic booms that were not accompanied by rattle was compared with that of sounds containing more higher‐frequency energy (an aircraft flyover and an octave band of noise centered at 1 ...

More than 1800 subject‐nights of observations have been completed in a large‐scale, in‐home study of awakenings associated with nighttime aircraft noise exposure in the vicinity of an Air Force base, a major civil airport, and several sites in urban neighborhoods with negligible nighttime aircraft noise exposure. A statistically reliable relationship was found between behaviorally confirmed awakenings and indoor sound exposure of individual noise events. This relationship is similar to one reported in another recent large‐scale field study, and also with a relationship summarizing the findings of several earlier field studies of noise‐induced sleep disturbance. The findings do not, however, agree well with those typically found in laboratory studies of sleep disturbance, nor with an interim dosage‐response relationship adopted by the Federal Interagency Committee on Noise. [Research sponsored by U.S. Air Force Armstrong Laboratory, Wright‐Patterson Air Force Base, OH.]