bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mobile recording units
Authors: McErlean (Revised by Malcolm Johnson) John
Published: November 2023

The purpose of an integrated mobile recording unit fitted with all major items of sound control and recording equipment is to provide a comfortable, pleasing on-the-road version of a static control room. The main problem is to maximize facilities in a restricted space.

Mobiles range from simple panel van conversions, incorporating straight-to-stereo tape and/or line equipment, to purpose-designed high-specification articulated semi-trailers incorporating acoustic treatment, built-in multitrack and stereo recorders, computer-assisted control desk, and a host of peripheral equipment. Before commencing on esoteric and costly designs it is obvious that customer needs and aspirations, as well as the size of his budget, have to be evaluated.
The Final Period
Authors: Musgrave Michael
Published: November 2023

The two works with which Brahms was occupied during the Ischl Summer of 1890, the String Quintet in G major and the revision of the Piano Trio in B major, symbolise the transition towards retirement from composition which Brahms planned from the following year, the year in which he also drew up his will. He offered the four-handed version of the Quintet in December of that year with the remark: ‘The time has come for you to say goodbye to any further compositions of mine.’1 Henceforth, he seems to have nothing other than the revision for publication of existing items, most obviously those of his most cherished project - the collection of 49 German Folksongs for solo voice and piano. That the two other collections - the Eleven Chorale Preludes for Organ and the Thirteen Canons for Female Voices also derived in part from earlier years seems very likely from their style and resources.
A biographical sketch
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

Here is a young man who, abandoning himself to his natural impressions and without taking a model, has found, if not a complete renewal of pianoforte music, at least a part of what has been sought in vain for a long time – namely an abundance of original ideas of which the type is to be found nowhere. We do not mean by this that M. Chopin is endowed with a powerful organisation like that of Beethoven, nor that there arise in his music such powerful concep tions as one remarks in that of this great man. Beethoven has composed pianoforte music, but I speak here of pianists’ music, and it is by comparison with the latter that I find in M. Chopin’s inspirations an indication of a renewal of forms which may exercise in time much influence over this department of the art.
Apprenticeship
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

‘Polonaise in G minor, dedicated to Her Excellency Countess Victoria Skarbek, composed by Frederick Chopin, a musician aged eight.’ This is how Chopin described his first surviving piece, published privately by Canon Cybulski in 1817. Most of the music he composed during these years of early childhood remained in manuscript and a great deal of it has disappeared. There is one other surviving piece from 1817, a Polonaise in B flat major, and after that we have nothing until the A flat major Polonaise of 1821, which he dedicated ‘to M. Żywny, from his pupil Frederick Chopin’. In general style and character the two early polonaises probably differed in no essential respects from the many short pieces which he was in the habit of improvising on the piano from an early age. Most of them he would not have bothered to write down.
Bel canto
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

By the time he composed the C sharp minor Prelude Chopin had already completed most of his nocturnes. He had of course borrowed the title, and to a large extent the manner also, from John Field and, like Field’s, his nocturnes eschew any obvious virtuosity in favour of an expressive, reflective lyricism. The nocturnes are above all character pieces, exploring many nuances within a deliberately restricted affective range, most often nostalgic, languid, consolatory, the music of a sad smile.
The spirit of Poland
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

Recent studies in the aesthetics of music have impressed upon us that nineteenth-century nationalism should be understood as much in terms of intention and receptive attitude as of musical substance. Chopin was a Polish nationalist to the extent that he intended, and was heard, to be. The issue of folk music is of considerable importance, naturally, but its significance can easily be misunderstood. Whether or not one agrees with Zofia Lissa2 that traditional Polish melodies for violin and flute were an important source for Chopin’s lyricism (I for one am sceptical), there can be no doubt that folk music does at least play a prominent role in the mazurkas.
The preludes revisited
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

There are many facets to Chopin’s art and the discussion in preceding chapters has tried to reflect that variety while at the same time broaching on occasion more elusive questions concerning quality (perhaps the most important thing about a work) and structure. The analysis of his music then has taken several different forms, according to the needs of the moment, but its starting-point has invariably been an approach loosely defined by David Epstein as ‘historical-stylistic’. Its thrust has been to illuminate musical processes by comparative methods, relating Chopin’s music to relevant stylistic backgrounds and to certain norms of structure and language, with the aim of pinpointing (through similarity) the sources of his style and (through dissimilarity) its defining characteristics in maturity. By and large this is the way of the past, both in its preoccupation with style and in its historical dimension, its sensitivity to context, its reflection of ‘la race, le milieu et le moment’.
The Liturgy of Vespers and the ‘Antiphon Problem’
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The Roman liturgy of vespers in effect at the time when Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine was published by Ricciardo Amadino in 16IO had been established by the Breviarium Romanum of Pope Pius Vin 1568. The Pius V breviary was the sequel to the deliberations of the Council of Trent (1545–63) and replaced the reform breviary of Cardinal Quinones, which had served the Roman liturgy from 1535 to 1568. The new breviary was conservative, restoring much of the pre-sixteenth-century office, and it remained in force until the reform breviary of Pius X in 1911. A more radical reform resulted from the Second Vatican Council in 1971.
Vesper Publications and Modern Style, 1600-1620: AComparison of Monteverdi’s Vespers with the Contemporaneous Repertoire
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

In the preceding chapter we witnessed the growth of the published Italian vesper repertoire in the second half of the sixteenth century, a growth which increased dramatically as the century approached its end. In the first decade of the new century, the number of extant prints once again augments by approximately 50 per cent. I have located more than 150 publications from this period, about two-thirds of them issued between 1605 and 1609. From the year 16m alone, aside from Monteverdi’s print, I have been able to trace an additional 25 surviving collections containing vesper music. Of the total of nearly 180 publications from these eleven years, 24 are reprints. By this time, the number of vesper publications has exceeded the number of mass prints from the same period. For the decade 1600–10, Anne Schnoebelen has counted 56 prints of masses only (19 of which are reprints), 21 of masses and motets (including 2 reprints), 12 of masses and psalms (which also count in my vesper calculations), and 22 of masses with other genres (including 3 reprints).1 The total number of publications containing masses is 111, less than two-thirds the number of publications of music for vespers. It is clear that by the first decade of the century, a major shift in emphasis had taken place in the public services of the Catholic Church in Italy. The vesper service had become a ceremony of major musical importance, not merely rivalling the mass, but actually surpassing it in number of publications and, consequently, in musical significance for the church calendar.
Compositions Based on a Cantus Firmus: The Magnificats
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The two Magnificats, printed one after the other in Monteverdi’s 16IO publication, deserve separate examination not only because of their unique character vis-a-vis the five psalms, but also because of their close relationship to one another. In addition to the cantus firmus and its contexts, cadence types, harmonic language, texture, style, and interpretation of texts, this chapter will explore the relationship between the two canticles. ‘Parody’ is an appropriate term to describe this relationship, for ten of the twelve verses exhibit similarities, in some instances very close parallels, between the two settings. Much of this chapter will be devoted to a comparison between the individual verses of the two Magnificats, whereby the varying contexts of the cantus firmus in style and texture will also be revealed. Through this process, the reader can observe both Monteverdi’s parody technique, as he adapts the setting of the same verse from one Magnificat to the other, and his variation technique, as he resets the same chant in the successive verses of each canticle. Such comparisons not only offer insight into the relationship between Monteverdi’s parody and variation techniques; they also offer a fascinating glimpse into the composer’s workshop in showing how he takes the material of one setting and recomposes it for the other. These comparisons demonstrate unequivocally that one Magnificat served as prototype for the other, but which one?While this question cannot be answered definitively, I will argue that the second Magnificat in the order of the 16rn print, the setting a 6, served as the source for the version a 7 with instruments.
Compositions not Based on a Cantus Firmus: Nigra Sum
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The remaining four pieces of the Vespers, the motets Nigra sum, Pulchra es, Duo Seraphim, and Audi coelum, are all in the modern solo or few-voiced style and are without any dependence on a cantus priusJactus. Nevertheless, an examination of these works demonstrates once again that, as in the psalms, hymn, Magnificats, and Sonata, variation techniques are a principal feature of Monteverdi’s compositional process.
Vocal Style
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

In late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy, singing was the most highly prized musical art. Castrati and other virtuoso singers were avidly recruited by courts and churches, and the new Roman and Florentine monody was developed principally by singers. Singing style also figures prominently in the writings of theorists and musicians of this period, although their remarks are often of a general nature rather than furnishing details of vocal training and voice-production. Nevertheless, it is possible to obtain from contemporaneous authors a reasonable idea of Italian preferences in singing style.
Metre and Tempo
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

Questions of metre, of mensural proportions, and of their relationship to tempo in the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century are among the thorniest issues faced by musicology and performance practice studies of this period. Conflicts and inconsistencies among theorists, diversity in notational practice, variety in the interpretation of notation in performance, changing styles, new genres, and variability in predominant note values all contribute to a sometimes bewildering picture of rhythmic notation, metric signatures, and their significance for tempo.
Vocal and Instrumental Ornamentation
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The practice of improvising ornaments to written melodic lines was centuries old by the time of Monteverdi’s Vespers. The earliest period from which we have detailed information about such embellishments is the sixteenth century, when many theorists were occupied with examining thoroughly all aspects of composition and performance, including the art of improvised ornamentation. Other sources of information from this period include instrumental transcriptions of vocal music, which often contain substantial ornamentation not found in the original versions. Until late in the sixteenth century there was no real distinction between vocal and instrumental ornamentation; in fact, instrumentalists were often advised to imitate the voice as closely as possible.
Tuning and Temperament
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

If the performance practice issues discussed in the preceding chapters seem ambiguous and incapable of definitive resolution, matters of tuning and temperament are equally problematic. Tempered tuning, mean-tone tunings, just intonation, Pythagorean tuning, and Ptolemaic tuning were all discussed and argued by theorists in the Renaissance and early seventeenth century. Pythagorean tuning, with its pure fifths, seems to have been preferred until about the middle of the fifteenth century. However, with increasing emphasis on the sonority of thirds and full triads in the late fifteenth century and the sixteenth century, mean-tone tuning, with its richer-sounding major thirds, became more popular, especially for organs and other keyboard instruments.
Original Preface
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

It has long been my impression that the quality of the ‘English language group’ in a traditional song recital has been a little dis appointing, especially when compared with the richness of the German and French repertory. The same few songs, often culled from some examination syllabus many years ago, turn up constantly, and it appears that the available resources are not being used to best advantage. Our present century continues to provide us with the widest variety of styles imaginable, and works for voice and piano in English reflect this diversity. Recital items can range from weighty song cycles by British and American composers at their full maturity, to a wealth of more lighthearted fare.
The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs/ A Flower (1942/1950) John Cage (1912-92) Text by James Joyce/no text
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

These beautiful and simple songs belong in the ‘contemporary classic’ category, but they may not be as well known to the general music public as they deserve. Partly through ignorance and partly because of the wide range of styles that Cage employs, those not familiar with his work may not appreciate the purely musical virtues which have always distinguished this visionary figure from his many imitators.
A Mini Song Cycle for Gina (I984) John Tavener (born I944) Text by W. B. Yeats
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Tavener’s highly individual cycle may appear simple at first sight, but a polished performance will require considerable artistry and concentration from the interpreter. The rapt atmosphere must be sustained through the almost continuous vocal line of this extended scena. The simple word-setting and natural rhythmic flow have a folk-like quality; the basically straightforward idiom is devoid of vocal gimmickry, but full of surprises.
Voice from the Tomb op. 36A (nos. 1-6, 1980; no. 7, 1973) Gordon Crosse (born 1937) Text by Stevie Smith
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The sardonic but touching and unfailingly witty poems of this cycle are typical of their author; the composer has set them in such a way that the singer should not find it difficult to convey their meaning.
Wherever We May Be op. 46 (1982) Robin Holloway (born 1943) Text by Robert Graves
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The high opus number for a composer still in his early forties indicates a prolific output; much of it is vocal. The contrasts found in the five songs are most appealing. The vocal idiom is supply graceful and not too demanding of the singer’s stamina. The delicately bubbling opening song has great freshness, vitality and natural impetus.
The Hermit of Green Light (1979) Ross Edwards (horn 1943) Text by Michael Dransfield
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

There cannot be many finer examples of writing for the countertenor voice than this. Edwards, a leading Australian composer, is acutely aware of the special qualities of incisiveness and enviable evenness of timbre typical of this voice. The four songs are fluent, dearly conceived and well contrasted, and the style throughout is most elegant. The piano writing is invitingly idiomatic. The dear textures should allow the singer to pick out pitch cues.
Mutability (1952) Irving Fine (1914-62) Text by Irene Orgel
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Irving Fine’s music is typical of a whole generation of American composers writing in an accessible and tightly controlled idiom based strongly on European tradition. It is a wonderfully challenging cycle. Its powerful musical and verbal images make Mutability an outstanding vehicle for a well-schooled artist who is able to command a wide range of colours and dynamics and is adept at fast articulation.
Three Songs (1961, revised 1970-71) Roger Smalley (born 1943) Text by Walter de la Mare
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Smalley’s very brief and highly concentrated songs are almost Japanese in their economy of content and delicate fragmentary style. His piano writing is resourceful and varied, as might be expected from a fine pianist; some modernistic vocal devices, such as glissando and singing without vibrato, are used most effectively. In general the tessitura is suited to a mezzo-soprano.
Four Songs (I958-60) David Del Tredici (born I937) Text by James Joyce
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The composer says in a note in the score that the four songs were not intended as a cycle, but that the printed order is his personal preference if they are to be performed together. These extremely fine works stretch the singer vocally, but in the most beneficial way. Del Tredici understands the voice intimately and knows which devices are truly effective.
Three Leaves of Grass (1967) Leif Segerstam (born 1944)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The flattering vocal lines of this skilful setting of three Whitman songs by a leading Finnish composer have a sensuous beauty. The style owes much to the Second Viennese School, showing a Webernian sensitivity to precise vocal shading and nuance. Swooping leaps over a wide range.
In the Temple of a Bird’s Wing (1956 and 1965) Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-83) Text by Teresa Tanner
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Lutyens, a much loved and mourned pioneer of the English avant garde, wrote a large amount of vocal works, all of which display the finest sensibility to vocal timbre and tessitura. Her vocal writing is virtuosic and wide ranging but smooth and comfortable to execute once the initial musical difficulties are overcome.
Ballad 2 (I970) Bernard Rands (born I935) Text by Gilbert Sorrentino
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This exciting and amusing theatre piece was, like many works of the time, written for the incomparable and greatly missed Cathy Berberian. As the composer says in a note in the score, it is one of a series of ballads, each featuring a specific area of vocal technique and gesture.
Music as Climate (1984) Paul Robinson (born 1949) Text by John Ash
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Although Music as Climate is written for bass and piano, it is best sung by a baritone. The many high notes which have to be articulated so quickly would put it out of range of most actual basses, unless falsetto is used. With shades of American-influenced minimalism, note pat terns are constantly repeated. The pitches are frequently doubled in the piano, thus relieving much of the potential strain on the singer.
The Evolution of a Canon at the Papal Chapel: The Importance of Old Music in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Authors: Dean Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The whole body of music performed by the singers of the papal chapel iri the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can be separated into three categories, distinguished by the varying degrees of permanence of individual compositions within the repertory. At one extreme we can place the very fluid body of ‘new’ music (new in the sense of its availability to the singers, not necessarily newly composed). Only a fraction of this music is apparent to us now. It was expensive to copy pieces into the big booklets and choirbooks that survive in the fando Cappella Sistina: a typical mass of fourteen openings would have cost over 4 scudi around 1540, at a time when the monthly salary of singers in the papal chapel (among the best paid in Italy) was about 9 scudi and a printed book containing five masses could be bought for 1.20 scudi.
A Virtuoso Singer at Ferrara and Rome: The Case of Bidon
Authors: Lockwood Lewis
Published: November 2023

No performer in early sixteenth-century Italy was more famous in his time than the soprano singer Antonio Collebaudi, called ‘Bidon’. 1 Born around 1480, probably in Asti, Bidon carved out a career that lasted from about 1500 to the early 1520s, when he died. His vocal virtuosity, which deeply impressed contemporary witnesses, made him an unusually desirable candidate for recruitment by rival patrons. As early as 1502, Bidon was one of three singers that the Ferrarese agent Gian de Artiganova brought back with him from a recruiting trip to Savoy; on arrival in Ferrara, Gian informed Duke Ercole I d’Este that the singers were ‘excellent in this art’.
Lully’s Orchestra
Authors: Spitzer John , Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

In a treatise on tuning keyboard instruments published in Paris in 1650 Jean Denis reports a curious and touching story. A beloved wife had fallen into profound melancholy. Her husband, in despair and having exhausted all known remedies, decided to follow the advice of a friend and hired the King’s famous string band, the Vingtquatre Violons du Roy. Following a previously agreed-upon plan, the members of the King’s band tuned their instruments in advance, entered the house, and crept noiselessly behind a tapestry suspended in the bedroom where the wife was sleeping:
The Decline of the Cantata and Cultivation of the Cantatille
Authors: Tunley David
Published: November 2023

Some reasons for the decline of the cantata were suggested in the first chapter, where it was pointed out that as the Italian-inspired form arose partly as a reaction against Lully’s courtly and insular art, it was to be expected that when the warm enthusiasm for Italian music which flooded into France after his death had cooled a little, the cultivation of the cantata should somewhat abate. Lacking those balletic and choral elements so dear to French audiences, the form was almost bound to lose its popularity, especially when the tragédie-lyrique was infused with new life by Rameau in 1733. It is, indeed, from about this time onwards that a sharp decrease in the composition of relatively large-scale and dramatic cantatas is noticeable.
The English Organ in Purcell’s Lifetime
Authors: Gwynn Dominic
Published: November 2023

The period of Purcell’s lifetime saw a transformation and expansion of the English organ. With the stimulus of Dutch and French influences, the stoplist, layout, pitch, and compass changed. The study of the organ in seventeenth-century England is still in its infancy, but an outline has emerged from recent research which shows the inadequacy of the standard accounts. English organ-building history has a tendency to be picturesque, relying on anecdote and the pronouncements of famous men. At its best, it has unearthed a mass of documentary references, churchwardens’ accounts, the odd contract, letters and diaries, and so on. Researchers are now starting to add the available archaeological evidence, and are adding to, verifying, and reinterpreting the documentary source material. It should not be too many years before enough information has been accumulated to justify a statistical analysis. We will then be able to give a good picture of developments and variations.
Purcell’s Stage Singers
Authors: Baldwin Olive , Wilson Thelma
Published: November 2023

Jeremiah Clarke’s ode Come, Come Alongfor a Dance and a Song was composed ‘upon ye Death of ye Famous Mr. Henry Purcell, and perform’d upon ye Stage in Druery lane play house’. This scene of shepherds rejoicing in a holiday and then mourning the death of the ‘Glory of ye Arcadian Groves’ was surely the most moving of the tributes to Purcell, sung and acted by the four principal singers for whom he had written in his final year. The oldest of these singers, John Freeman, was 29; both the boy Jemmy Bowen and the girl Letitia Cross were under 15, and the bass, Richard Leveridge, was 24 or 25. We would be unlikely, nowadays, to hear a tribute to a major composer put on in a leading London theatre with performers so youthful, and this perhaps startles us into thinking about the differences between performers and performing conditions in Purcell’s day and the manner in which we perform him now. Looking at the ages, backgrounds, and personalities of the singers for whom he wrote should be illuminating.
Performance and Political Allegory in Restoration England:What to Interpret and When
Authors: Walkling Andrew R
Published: November 2023

Allegory is an essential component of the vocabulary of those of us who work with the texts, the drama, and a good portion of the music of the seventeenth century. Even a cursory familiarity with the high culture of the period will make clear both the extent to which allegory played a crucial role in many aspects of seventeenth-century public and courtly discourse and the multifariousness of allegorical expression-not to mention the widespread familiarity with particular kinds of allegorical symbols which prevailed at this time. In the context of allegory as a component of opera, Curtis Price’s article for The New Grove Dictionary ef Opera provides a useful starting-point. Price identifies three basic levels of allegorical expression that can be found in the operas of the seventeenth century: parable, mythological symbolism, and topical or political allusion. The first and second levels do not present any major interpretive problems: if a text uses parable to convey a moral or aphoristic message, that message can usually be understood with a minimum of difficulty. By the same token, mythological symbolism can be relatively easy to decipher, whether the purpose is to make a general statement about commonly held values or to pay respect to the author’s patron or another important personage. It is in the area of topical or political allusion that the problems of allegory become most apparent.
The Salzburg Symphonies: a Biographical Interpretation
Authors: Eisen Cliff
Published: November 2023

MOZART’S dissatisfaction with Salzburg, and his antipathy to Archbishop Colloredo, have traditionally been the stuff of Mozart biography. ‘I must frankly confess’, Mozart wrote to his father from Strasbourg in 1778, ‘that I should arrive in Salzburg with a lighter heart, did I not remember that I am to be in the service of the Court. It is that thought which is intolerable to me’.1Most scholars put the blame for Mozart’s misfortunes squarely on Colloredo’s shoulders: a tyrannical despot, unaware of Mozart’s genius or unwilling to acknowledge it, he plagued the young composer and eventually forced his removal from court service. According to Hildesheimer, Colloredo ‘reacted [to Mozart] with strangely excessive emotion and constant irritation’,
An Early Form in Mozart’s Late Style: the Overture to La clemenza di Tito
Authors: Küster Konrad
Published: November 2023

LA clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte are Mozart’s last operas; their overtures are his last symphonic movements. The overture to Die Zauberflöte seems to be a modern sonata-form movement of the time. After a slow introduction the Allegro section begins quietly; the exposition can be understood as a standard form consisting of primary group, transition, secondary group and codetta. A thematic development section follows; and the recapitulation differs only slightly from the exposition. This is the normal form of Mozart’s later Viennese overtures.1 The Cost fan tutte overture is exception.al in that some sections seem to be shorter than usual for a normal sonata-form movement, and in the recapitulation they appear in a new order; but as a whole such alterations of the standard pattern are unremarkable.
From Simplicity to Complexity in La clemenza di Tito
Authors: Neville Don
Published: November 2023

MOZART’S first full essay into opera seria, Mitridate, re di Ponto, opened in Milan in 1770. His last, La clemenza di Tito, had its first performance in Prague in 1791. Before the Mitridate premiere, personnel involved with the production expressed concern over the likelihood that the 14-year-old would have insufficient understanding of the ‘chiaro edoscuro’ necessary for the theatre.1 In Tito, plain ‘contrast’, as a dramatic element, is particularly exploited. It regulates the ebb and flow of the dramatic rhythm and gives focus to the character conflicts and to the moral predicaments from which many of these conflicts arise.
The Cafe-Concert
Authors: Whiting Steven Moore
Published: November 2023

The café-concert (caf’conç;:’ or caf’conc’ for short) established itself during the Second Empire as the standard diversion of the urban bourgeoisie and working class. Its origins, however, may be traced back to the mid-eighteenth century, to two distinct ways of combining supper and song. One was the practice of offering entertainment along with refreshment at a cafe; the other was the private singing society (or caveau).
Introduction
Authors: Whiting Steven Moore
Published: November 2023

Satie grew up with music, much of it what we would call popular. His father Alfred, a shipping broker in the Norman coastal town of Honfleur, was a studious and cultivated man, a linguist and a passable musician with an interest in aesthetic issues. When Wagner assaulted Paris during the 186os, Alfred published articles in the local paper that took the part of Rossini, then still alive. Little is known about Satie’s mother, nee Jane Leslie Anton of Scottish and English parentage. We have only Alfred’s description of his fiancée in a letter (25 March 1865) to his close friend (and, later, renowned historian) Albert Sorel, affirming that Miss Anton was ‘very distinguished, has a very culti vated mind, is a good musician, and draws well’-in short, she had all the attainments of a properly raised bourgeois woman. Hence, it is easy to credit the assertion that Satie ‘must have passed his infancy in a home where domestic music-making was a regular event’.
Satie’s Humoristic Works for Piano
Authors: Whiting Steven Moore
Published: November 2023

Satie’s twenty years in the cabarets of Montmartre had acquainted him with a wide range of satirical techniques. At the present juncture, his years of collaboration with Vincent Hyspa bore unexpected fruit in the venue of the concert hall. We have seen that Hyspa was best known for his parody of familiar music: airs from opera and operetta, military songs, children’s songs, folk-songs, and so forth, all of which he arranged (or deranged) to suit his satirical purposes.
From Chanson to Melodie and Back
Authors: Whiting Steven Moore
Published: November 2023

One day towards the end of September 1914, Satie took his brother on a tour of his old haunts on the Butte, the ‘places where he had a good time’. He chatted about the Chat Noir and about Peladan, he pointed out the many changes since he had left the rue Cortot. Coming to musical matters, Satie described the ‘slow formation of his calling as a humorist’ and his ‘new manner’-a calling and a manner for which twenty years of bohemian life in the very district the brothers that day were revisiting had provided the models.
The Romantic Legacy
Authors: Dunsby Jonathan
Published: November 2023

In my experience of taking bright students through their music analysis classes, dissecting the forms, textures, rhythms, tonalities, notations, texts-whatever there is to try to under stand in the works of fine composers-I have been confronted countless times by one question: ‘Did the composer know about this?’ It takes a long time to put all the facts in a particular case that may persuade the student both that the composer did not know and, however, that this is not relevant, that what matters is what we ourselves know. Long ago I put this pedagogical problem to a lively American colleague noted for her ability to spread knowledge and enlightenment among her charges: ‘Just tell them “Sure! The composer knew!”‘ she said, ‘then change the subject’.
The red-haired priest
Authors: Talbot Michael
Published: November 2023

The surname Vivaldi is known from the twelfth century. In 1165 one Guglielmo Vivaldi from T aggia near San Remo was Governor of Sicily. In 1291 the Genoese brothers Guido and Ugolino Vivaldi were members of the ill-fated expedition led by Tedisio Doria, which, in search of a sea route to the Indies, disappeared mysteriously somewhere off Morocco. From the fifteenth century members of the Vivaldi family were prominent in Genoa, giving the Republic senators, ambassadors, a general and even a doge (Gerolamo Vivaldi, 1559–61). At the beginning of the sixteenth century Bernardo Vivaldi, an exile from Genoa, took refuge in Savona, founding a branch which is said to have multiplied rapidly and spread throughout Italy. Today the name Vivaldi is concentrated in no particular locality, though, perversely enough, it seems especially rare in Venice.
Years of travel
Authors: Talbot Michael
Published: November 2023

The duchy of Mantua, bordering the Veneta, was a flourishing centre of the arts during the seventeenth century. Indirectly, lavish spending on court entertainment led to the downfall of the Gonzaga dynasty, for the last duke, Ferdinando Carlo, being greatly in debt, was bribed into an alliance with the French during the War of the Spanish Succession. As Mantua was a fief of the Austrian Empire, this constituted treason; accordingly, the victorious Austrians made Mantua an hereditary imperial possession, appointing as governor the younger brother of the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, Prince Philip. Fortunately, Mantua’s cultural life continued much as before under Philip’s governorship (1714–35).

The movement of musicians between Venice and Mantua was a two-way traffic of long standing. If Vincenzo di Gonzaga had lost Monteverdi to Venice in 1613, Ferdinando Carlo’s recruitment of Caldara in 1700 showed that the pull could as well come from the other direction. A period of service at even a small court like Mantua’s offered a musician from republican Venice a type of experience and a species of patronage for which his city provided no equivalent.
The vocal music
Authors: Talbot Michael
Published: November 2023

‘Vivaldi, who wanted to be active in both fields [vocal and instrumental], always got himself hissed in the first, though he enjoyed great success in the second.’ Thus Tartini, arguing his case that vocal and instrumental composition, being so different in character, could not be mastered equally by one man. This opinion, which smacks of sour grapes, is belied not only by the facts of Vivaldi’s career but by remarks of other contemporaries, notably Mattheson, who, having observed that vocal writing does not tolerate the leaps found in instrumental writing, states: ‘Vivaldi, albeit no singer, has had the sense to keep violinleaps out of his vocal compositions so completely that his arias have become a thorn in the flesh to many an experienced vocal composer.’

The sheer mass of Vivaldi’s vocal music, sacred as well as secular, would not disgrace a composer who never wrote a note of instrumental music: over 45 operas, of which 16 survive in their entirety and four (including Vivaldi’s contribution to II Tigrane) in sufficiently complete form to merit analysis; eight shorter stage works (three extant); 40 cantatas; over 60 sacred works, including four oratorios (one extant).
The creation and transmission of musical sounds
Authors: Campbell Murray , Greated Clive
Published: November 2023

In the first paragraph of the Introduction we described the start of a performance of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto. We identified the process of communicating between performers and listeners as the musical heart of the matter. Let us now return to the concert hall to examine this process, taking the point of view of a musician equipped with a lively curiosity and some useful scientific tools of investigation.
Sound production in musical instruments
Authors: Campbell Murray , Greated Clive
Published: November 2023

In this chapter we shall consider the basic physical principles by which sound is generated in different musical instruments. The range of instruments available to the musician is so vast that at first sight this might seem an insurmountable task. Nevertheless, many of these have similarities which enable us to group them together for the purpose of analysis. In this connection it will be helpful if we start by considering how instruments fit into the different classification groups.
Symphonic Music I
Authors: Whittall Arnold
Published: November 2023

‘The transition from composition which still emphasized key (while always containing many dissonances) to one where there is no longer any key, any tonic, any consonances, happened gradually, in accordance not with any wish or will, but with a vision, an inspiration; it happened perhaps instinctively.’
Symphonic Music II
Authors: Whittall Arnold
Published: November 2023

The first chapter on tonal symphonic music dealt principally with composers who, in respect of date of birth, were the seniors of Bartók and Stravinsky. This chapter gives its main emphasis to Hindemith, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, who were born between 1890 and 1910 and thus came to creative maturity after the principal issue of early twentieth-century music – to retain or abandon tonality – had already been raised.
Alban Berg
Authors: Whittall Arnold
Published: November 2023

Alban Berg (1885–1935) became a pupil of Schoenberg’s in 1904, and developed over the next decade into a composer whose differences from his teacher were of the greatest significance. His first opera, Wozzeck, was begun before the end of the First World War, Berg adapting his own libretto from Biichner’s play, and it occupied him until 1922: it was first performed, with great success, in Berlin in 1925.
Seven Europeans
Authors: Whittall Arnold
Published: November 2023

The early works of Witold Lutoslawski (born in Poland in 1913) display a wide range of influences from among those modem composers who retained an ultimate commitment to tonal emphasis. Of their very nature, however, these influences were likely to stimulate further exploration rather than mere imitation, and the music of Szymanowski and Bartók was of particular importance in providing Lutoslawski with ideas about how he might develop a more personal, more radical style.
The Midsummer Marriage
Authors: Bowen Meirio
Published: November 2023

I picked up once off a book barrow in Berne a mid-nineteenth-century brochure, which was a set of lectures given by a von Stein about the theatrical relations of Schiller to Goethe. I have an idea that the lecturer was the son (or grandson?) of Goethe’s Frau von Stein, but I have lost the brochure and cannot be certain. In any case the tone of voice was of someone very close to the Weimar circle. As I have not read Schiller properly or seen his plays, I found all von Stein had to say about him interesting and new. Von Stein examined Schiller’s idea that one of the roles in a drama might be a collective personality, not an individual. Schiller, he said, called his play ‘Wallenstein’s Lager’, instead of just ‘Wallenstein’, to emphasize that the camp is to be apprehended as playing just such a collective role.
Introduction
Authors: Williams Peter
Published: November 2023

This book presents examples of how gifted composers have made use of one particular theme or idea and have thereby, wittingly or unwittingly, developed a common pursuit. Having gradually become aware of the number of ways in which this theme occurs in music, I have looked for historical threads connecting them, and if at times readers are not convinced that a certain excerpt does show a chromatic fourth as it is defined below, I can only say that at some point I heard it to be so. Seldom does any observation here lead to deep theory or complex analytical structures. But almost .all of the book’s examples have struck me while playing or listening to music, and being few (considering the vastness of music), they may well lead readers to find other examples, especially in repertories with which they are more familiar than I.
Pavanes and Fantasias
Authors: Williams Peter
Published: November 2023

In calling the chromatic fourth a ‘point which our organists use’, Thomas Morley might have been implying some disdain for organ music as distinct from madrigals. But he could also have been reporting common practice: by 1597, keyboardists had come to include it amongst the standard themes in the counterpoint they wrote or improvised, with or without melancholy associations, which in any case Morley does not mention.
Beethoven
Authors: Williams Peter
Published: November 2023

Two-thirds of the way through the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, preparation is made to return to the main theme (see Ex. 7. r). So a movement already of unsurpassed beauty is made more affecting still by the ‘threat’ of the chromatic fourth just before the main theme returns, which it does a few bars later, now not lyrically but tutti fortissimo. Such music seems to narrate, such that one might speak figuratively of a ‘sense of arrival’ or an ‘emotional stability’ when the fortissimo announces a tonic finally achieved-’the D major of this life’, as Browning might have put it.
‘Entartete Musik’: Reading the Nazis and the Schreker Case
Authors: Tambling Jeremy
Published: November 2023

This chapter explores decadence and nihilism in the senses in which these terms are constitutive of fascist rhetoric and also a critique of fascism. Two odd couples run through my consideration of this: Wagner and Nietzsche, Wilde and Schreker, with Franz Schreker (1878-1934) opening and dosing the chapter. His reputation was made by his ‘decadent’ opera Der feme Klang (1912). In the 1920s he taught in Berlin, a city reckoned since the 1890s to be at the heart of decadence. Romain Rolland thought that Salomes decadence, along with Strauss’s modernism and rejection of past musical traditions, originated in his association with fin de siicle Berlin. After the war, Berlin represented Weimar culture.
lvanov’s Last Ballets
Authors: Wiley Roland John
Published: November 2023

In the six years remaining to Ivanov after Swan Lake, he was involved in the production of three new ballets, one revival, and a substantial addition to a classic of the repertoire. Of the three new ballets, one was a brief pastoral (Acis and Galatea), one was a major enterprise on which much state money was spent (The Mikado’s Daughter), and one-not brought to the stage during his lifetime-was for a private imperial staging (An Egyptian Night). The revival was of Delibes’s Sylvia, which Ivanov began but Pavel Gerdt finished during Ivanov’s final illness; the substantial addition was a setting of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody performed as a czardas in Saint-Leon’s The Little Humpbacked Horse .
Two Performance-Related Problems
Authors: Atlas Allan W
Published: November 2023

Some of the pieces in the Edition—and many more that are not—call attention to two aspects of performance practice that are, we might say, concertina specific. First, throughout the nineteenth century there were-as there still are—two different systems of fingering: one with the fourth (or little) finger and one without it; and the difference between them goes beyond mere choice and convenience, for without the fourth finger, some compositions simply cannot be played precisely as written. Second, at least for the first three decades or so of its existence, the concertina utilized mean-tone tuning, and thus differentiated between the pitches of the normally enharmonic pairs G#/ A and D#/E ; this drew the scorn of such critics of the day as Hector Berlioz, and now raises questions about the use of the concertina with other instruments, especially the piano.
The Early Songs I
Authors: Brown David
Published: November 2023

Wo or Three Years Before His Death In 1911 The French musicologist Charles Malherbe, archivist-librarian and avid collector of musical autographs, came into possession of a bound manuscript of Russian provenance. The acquisition surprised him, for Russians were not accustomed to sell their manuscripts and, as Louis Laloy explained, this one was no sketch but a carefully written autograph copy Moreover, the composer was a major one: Musorgsky It was entitled, in Musorgsky’s own hand, ‘Years of youth: a collection of romances … (from 1857 to 1866)’, and the composer himself had been responsible for having it bound in St Petersburg.
The Early Songs II
Authors: Brown David
Published: November 2023

Ne Crucial Fact Marked Out The Childhood Years of Glinka and Musorgsky from those of the other major figures of nineteenth-century Russian music. Balakirev, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov all grew up in urban environments; by contrast, Glinka and Musorgsky were bred on rural estates, thus imbibing folk culture to a degree probably denied the others during their most formative years.
Biographical Note
Authors: Evans Peter
Published: November 2023

Edward Benjamin Britten was born at Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 22 November 1913, a happy chance that was later to allow musicians to celebrate St Cecilia’s Day and his birthday together. His father, a dentist, appears to have had no artistic interests, but his mother was an amateur singer who encouraged him to compose, even before formal musical tuition began. At a time when Bach, Beethoven and Brahms dominated the orthodox canon, she predicted his becoming ‘the fourth B’, sowing the seeds of his later compulsive work ethic, but also of his depressions when he doubted the quality of his invention.
Early Chamber and Piano Music
Authors: Evans Peter
Published: November 2023

The first span of Britten’s activity, up to his return from America, is bounded by two chamber works, the Sinfonietta and the first string quartet, both of which demand examination in some detail if the composer’s precocious command of structural thinking is to be made clear. What happens in the nine years between them is partly a strengthening of faith in tonal mechanisms and partly a development of idiosyncratic melodic and harmonic procedures; sometimes a big step comes in a slight work, and at this formative stage it is worth while to look carefully at even those scores which may seem peripheral.
Paul Bunyan
Authors: Evans Peter
Published: November 2023

Though several works to which Britten assigned opus numbers were subsequently withdrawn, like the Occasional Overture for the opening of the BBC Third Programme in 1946 (see p. 555), only one piece, the operetta Paul Bunyan, of 1941, continued to attract much comment after its suppression. And comment was necessarily speculative for, whatever its significance as a trial essay in a medium the composer was later to cultivate with such success, and as his only operatic collaboration with Auden, it had been seen neither on stage nor in score by any of the writers who discussed Britten’s work; not surprisingly therefore it acquired a mysterious aura during the thirty-five years between its first and second productions.