bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Life and Work
Authors: Whittall Mary
Published: November 2023

The image of Beethoven that survives in the mind of posterity is a diffuse compilation of impressions emanating from the music and biographical fragments that consist to a great extent of legends and anecdotes. Indeed, the relationship between the works and the life appears all the closer if we place our faith in the revelatory power of anecdotes in which the truth is more symbolic than empirical, instead of relying on documentary testimony that stands up to historical criticism. There is very little documentary evidence for the celebrated scene in Teplitz, in which Beethoven assumes the role of the truculent republican, but any attempt to expunge it from the mind of the concert-going public would be wasted, for it is nothing less than the image that complements the musical gesture of the Fifth Symphony. It persists, in spite of the critical battering it has received, because it testifies to an aesthetic, if not historical, truth.
Theme and Character
Authors: Whittall Mary
Published: November 2023

Theories of musical form, the origins of which lie in the eighteenth century, depended for their terminology on the theory of affects on the one hand, and on rhetoric on the other. It remains impossible to understand the use of an apparently unambiguous word like ‘theme’—one of the central concepts of instrumental music in its striving for independent status-so long as we disregard the fact that, with varying degrees of emphasis, it represents an aesthetic category as well as a technical compositional one. It would be a mistake to attempt to expunge the ambiguity, because its very ambivalence raises issues, the reconstruction of which provides access to the epoch’s thinking on musical form.
‘Subthematicism’
Authors: Whittall Mary
Published: November 2023

The question of Beethoven’s late style has driven some writers to take refuge in the safe but stale controversy as to whether the composer was ‘classical’ or ‘romantic’; but where the literature has faced up to the issues surrounding an oeuvre that towers up disconcertingly out of the period of restoration following the fall of Napoleon, emphasis has always been placed on the contradictions with which the works are fissured. Moritz Bauer discovered in the late string quartets and piano sonatas a ‘ metaphysical trait’, informing all the music, and a propensity for abstraction, revealed in the recourse to canonic and fugal techniques, but also a ‘striving for vocal expression’, manifested as much in instrumental recitative as in the tendency to give a lyrical, songlike character to the first subject in a sonata movement, as well as to the second.
Late Works
Authors: Whittall Mary
Published: November 2023

The concept of composers’ ‘late works’, derived essentially from the oeuvres of Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt, forms a category that we will only understand if we try to get to the bottom of the configuration of archaizing and modern elements that have gone into it.
Interpreting Bach at the keyboard
Authors: Badura-Skoda Paul , Clayton Alfred
Published: November 2023

The ever-increasing number of performances of Bach's music is a sign of its enduring vitality. Yet there exists a diversity of interpretation of a magnitude that probably applies to no other composer. Assessing the varying merits of these interpretational approaches, and getting to grips with the sources and documents on which they are based, can be extremely difficult for a modern performer. Paul Badura-Skoda, who has been studying and performing Bach's keyboard music for more than forty years, here presents a host of valuable new insights drawn from his deep knowledge of the sources and of the problems of interpretation. He looks in detail at the various aspects of Bach's music, providing chapters on rhythm, tempo, articulation, and dynamics. He also examines the instruments for which Bach's music was intended, and discusses interpretational issues arising from this, as well as problems of sonority. The second part of the book is devoted to a comprehensible discussion of ornamentation with a detailed examination of the signs and symbols used by Bach. This discussion is prompted not only by its central importance to baroque music in general, but also because the author believes so much of Bach's ornamentation in current performance practice is monotonous and fails to correspond to the baroque style at all. Sometimes contentious, always stimulating, Paul Badura-Skoda's text conveys a passion for an informed interpretation of Bach's music based upon a recognition and respect for Bach's musical and intellectual intentions. Copiously illustrated throughout with music examples, Interpreting Bach at the Keyboard will take its place as a standard work for all students and performers of Bach's keyboard music.
In Search of the Correct Bach Tempo
Authors: Badura-Skoda Paul , Clayton Alfred
Published: November 2023

Choosing the correct tempo is a matter of the utmost importance. Mozart once remarked that it is the most crucial thing in music. Yet for a long time I was unable to write about tempos in Bach. It was not that I did not have a clear idea about the speed at which his works ought to be played. However, my research is concerned with facts, not with subjective emotions. True, in Bach’s lifetime various treatises dealt with the question of tempo, though a hundred years before the invention of the metronome they were usually content to give a rough indication of the relative speed, for instance that a certain tempo should be taken at a ‘lively’ pace, and that another should be ‘less lively’. The rare attempts to define tempo in ‘absolute’ terms with the help of time, pulse, or pendulum measurements apply to works which arc stylistically so far removed from Bach that it is not really possible to transfer the results to his music.2 How can I prove that my tempos are more correct than those of a pianist who plays adagio movements and sarabandes twice as slowly as I do? The modern differences in tempo are clearly due to the almost complete lack of precise contemporary tempo indications in Bach’s works.
Problems of Sonority
Authors: Badura-Skoda Paul , Clayton Alfred
Published: November 2023

It may be taken for granted that J. S. Bach was intimately acquainted with the rich variety of instruments in use in his time. It may also be taken for granted that Bach was not always wholly satisfied with these instruments, particularly when the ones at his disposal were of poor quality or in need of repair. This may have been one of the reasons why he acquired a rather large collection of instruments, as is shown by the catalogue of his estate.
Problems of Harpsichord and Piano Technique, and of Expressive Playing
Authors: Badura-Skoda Paul , Clayton Alfred
Published: November 2023

Because we are concerned with performances on harpsichords, fortepianos, and modern pianos, it seems apposite to describe the similarities and differences between the ways these instruments are played. Common to all of them is a certain resistance in the action that has to be overcome in order to produce a sound. On the harpsichord this resistance stems from the greater or lesser degree of rigidity of the quill plectra and can be quite considerable when all the stops are in use. On the fortepiano, be it early or modern, the reason for this resistance is the (now much greater) weight of the hammer and the ‘aftertouch’, which is similar to that of the harpsichord. In passing it is worth mentioning that on the clavichord there is no escapement resistance until the tangent strikes the vibrating string.
Bach’s Mordent
Authors: Badura-Skoda Paul , Clayton Alfred
Published: November 2023

Two factors are characteristic of the mordent: it occurs only in keyboard music (at least in J. S. Bach), and, unlike the trill, it adheres to the main-note beginning even in the early eighteenth century. In view of the fact that it mirrored the (short) trill it should, going by the ‘auxiliary note’ rule, have begun on the lower auxiliary.
The Composer-Audience Relationship
Authors: Schroeder David P
Published: November 2023

If Haydn’s consistent objective in his symphonies was to achieve enlightened goals, then an issue of fundamental importance must be the composer’s relationship with his audience. The nature of the effect that the works should have on an audience, however, is not something which the composer determines independently. It is determined within the context of larger social and philosophical aspirations of which the audience is an integral part, and hence the audience itself has a role in determining the nature of the works intended for it, in shaping the creative process of the artist.
Extramusical Factors
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

IT is difficult to assess how much extramusical influence there was on Beethoven’s output, since any answer is bound to involve some speculation; but there is some ti.rm evidence that can be brought to bear on the subject. It is a subject about which a great deal has been written already, but much of the literature has tended to confuse the issue rather than illuminate it. In some cases errors of dating have led to false conclusions about extramusical influence, and three other things have also been allowed to cloud the picture: hearsay evidence, pure speculation, and the notion that Beethoven’s music is a close parallel to his life. It will be best to dispose of each of these ideas first.
The Sketchbooks and their Use
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

IT is not known precisely at what age Beethoven started making sketches for compositions, but it was probably almost as soon as he started composing; he once referred to ‘the bad habit I formed in childhood of feeling obliged to write down my first ideas immediately’. No actual sketches for finished works have survived from before about 1787,’ but certainly by the time he left Bonn for Vienna in November 1792 he was sketching extensively, for no fewer than twenty-one leaves devoted exclusively to sketches are known to date from his Bonn period,3 as well as a number of leaves which contain other material but which have sketches in the empty spaces. When he left for Vienna in 1792 he took with him a portfolio of manuscripts that included both finished works and also these sketches, and the fact that so much early material survives indicates how central the sketching process was to his creativity even at an early age, and how highly he regarded his sketches throughout his life.
The Sketching of Melody
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

SINCE most of Beethoven’s sketches consist of single-line drafts, it is inevitable that they should appear at first sight to be concerned mainly with melodic shape. This impression is reinforced by the way successive sketches for a work nearly always display conspicuous melodic alterations; and such refinements tend to be highlighted when only short extracts from sketches are published. But melodic refinement was only one part of the sketching process and is intimately bound up with other aspects of the music; the sketches were frequently concerned with such things as formal shape, phrase structure, and tonal scheme rather than melodic detail, even if melodic alterations were being made at the same time, and the melodic changes themselves were often dependent on these other aspects.
Composition History and Musical Sources
Authors: Brown Matthew
Published: November 2023

For anyone studying the psychology of musical composition, Debussy is a particularly challenging subject. Whereas some musicians place great emphasis on the craft of composing, he shunned systematic approaches of any sort. His main goal was to create works that sounded completely unstudied, and, in his opinion, the pathway towards this goal is so mysterious that it defies rational explanation.
‘Par les rues et les chemins’
Authors: Brown Matthew
Published: November 2023

The preceding chapters have provided a general understanding of the genesis and thematic tonal outline of Ibéria. In Chapter r we gathered basic information about the chronology and sources of the piece as a whole. In Chapter 2 we examined the work’s Spanish elements and described some of the ways in which Debussy acquired his knowledge of Hispanic music.
‘Les Paifums de la nuit’
Authors: Brown Matthew
Published: November 2023

It is hard to imagine a more dramatic juxtaposition than that between the first and second movements of Ibéria. In place of the ebullience of ‘Par les rues et les chemins’, ‘Les Parfums de la nuit’ evokes what Falla referred to as ‘the intoxicating spell of Andalusian nights’.
Structural Considerations
Authors: Zychowicz James L
Published: November 2023

While completing the draft score of the Fourth Symphony in Summer 1900, Mahler began to discuss the music in detail with his confidante Natalie Bauer-Lechner. After telling her the key of the work—G major—and the approximate performance—time—45 minutes-he confessed that in composing the Fourth ‘I only wanted to write a symphonic Humoresque, and out of it came a symphony of normal dimensions’. While he was nowhere explicit about what constituted for him ‘normal dimensions’, the result was a concise symphony in four movements for a smaller orchestra than his earlier works.
“Das himmlische Leben” before the Fourth Symphony
Authors: Zychowicz James L
Published: November 2023

In various ways the song “Das himmlische Leben” is at the core of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, and the composer himself regarded the song as the goal and inspiration for the later work. He once told Natalie Bauer-Lechner that ‘Das himmlische Leben’ formed ‘the tapering, topmost spire of the edifice of this Fourth Symphony’. Even though the song and the symphony emerged years apart, Mahler's comment underscores the complex and suc­cessful integration between them.
Short Score
Authors: Zychowicz James L
Published: November 2023

After working on the preliminary sketches for the first three movements of the Fourth Symphony, Mahler used them to prepare the more continuous short score or Particell of the work. At some point he organized the preliminary sketches and numbered the pages to reflect the order of ideas as he wanted them to occur in the short score. By ordering the material he had possibly composed out of sequence he had already moved beyond preliminary sketch stage. Yet not all the transitions were in place, nor had he completely thought out the structure of the symphony.
Fair Copy
Authors: Zychowicz James L
Published: November 2023

The fair copy of the Fourth Symphony is the full score that Mahler used for the premiere of the work and also the basis for its first publication. In the draft score he had already completed the first orchestration of the work, but it remained for him to refine the score when he took the Fourth into the fair copy. While he might change the substance of the symphony at this point, such revision was rarer than the attention he gave to the details of scoring, dynamics, and other expressive elements, which he applied more consistently at this stage of composition.
Towards a Grounding in Bach Interpretation
Authors: Hurford Peter
Published: November 2023

As a composer, no other musician has so thoroughly understood and responded to the organ’s nature. Bach’s handling of counterpoint fulfilled the instrument’s musical potential and raised the art of organ music to a level comparable with that of any other instrument. Indeed, he set a standard which required his predecessors to be re-evaluated, and which illuminated for posterity the organ’s potential as a musical medium.
The Sacrae Cantiones
Authors: Watkins Glenn , Stravinsky Igor
Published: November 2023

THE only reference to any of Gesualdo’s sacred works before the twentieth century is in a letter from Fontanelli to Duke Alfonso stating that the Prince had been busy writing and had composed, in addition to several madrigals, a motet and an aria.1 Heseltine was one of the first to mention their existence, but he did not examine them and was correct in stating at that time that his fame as a composer rested entirely upon his madrigals.2
The Final Years1891-1897
Authors: Avins Styra , Eisinger Josef
Published: November 2023

Important works come from the last years ofBrahms’s life-the clarinet music, the late piano pieces, Op. 116-19, and the Four Serious Songs (Vier ernste Gesiinge). None the less, one distinct impression left by letters of this period is that of a man managing an extensive and diverse network of friends and family. ‘Outsider’, lonely man, he who never laughed inwardly (as he once said to Alwin von Beckerath); if he was those things in his own mind and where it counts most, he was also a person with a very active social life who wrote a great many letters to maintain it.
The Cathedral cappella in the Early Seicento
Authors: Reardon Colleen
Published: November 2023

When Agostino Agazzari took over the organist’s position at the Duomo in January 1597, he became a member of the most prestigious musical organization in Siena. Professional musicians first appeared on the Cathedral’s payment registers at the dawn of the quattrocento, and the growth of the cappella in the following century and a half mirrored the city’s aspirations to international prominence and power. The cappella became a symbol of Sienese resistance during the brutal siege of 1554-5, when the Republic was in its death-throes.
Musical Repertoire and Liturgical Context
Authors: Reardon Colleen
Published: November 2023

In October 1608, the canons of Siena Cathedral wrote to the Grand Duke of Tuscany asking for higher wages. They obviously had got wind of a pay rise that was to be granted to the musicians and used that as an argument to justify their own request. Lorenzo Usimbardi, secretary to the Grand Duke, shrewdly turned the difficult matter over to the Sienese rector, Muzio Placidi.
Tone Production
Authors: Schuller Gunther
Published: November 2023

The manner in which the instrument is held is of the utmost importance. Tastes and national schools vary considerably in this. But in general, one can say that playing positions seem to be determined by the type of sound a particular school finds desirable. In the United States horn players tend to find a darker tone more useful, while in England a more open quality seems to be common practice. The English players no doubt find the American horn quality (especially some of the more extreme examples) muffled and too close to a tuba sound; while the Americans think of their English colleagues as lacking in the characteristic horn mellowness and too close in tone conception to the trombone or baritone.
Legato
Authors: Schuller Gunther
Published: November 2023

A beautiful legato on the horn is one of the most precious characteristics. Since a large part of the horn literature consists of music where a good legato is required, the student is advised to spend much time on this problem. The single most important factor in legato playing (slurring from one note to another) is our old friend ‘breath support’. As we have learned, it is the air column that largely controls the vibration of the lips. Now the secret of good slurring is to keep this vibrating of the lips constant and controlled between slurred notes. Otherwise the beauty of the legato will be impaired or-worse yet-the player may find that the second note, to which he is attempting to slur, will not speak at all. It therefore stands to reason that extremely sensitive control of the air column is the key to a smooth, perfectly controlled legato.
Compositional Chronology
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

The dates of composition of Beethoven’s folksong settings are nearly always stated imprecisely or inaccurately, even in major scholarly publications. This applies equally to individual settings and whole groups. For example, all of the songs in WoO 152 were completed by February 1812, and the compositional dates for Op.
Publication History
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

The publication history of Beethoven’s folksong settings is somewhat better known than their compositional chronology, and has already been out lined in Table 1.2. But some of the details need amplification, and the relationship of Thomson’s publication of the settings to their origins has not hitherto been understood.
Origin of the Melodies
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

The melodies used for Beethoven’s settings have a wide variety of origins. Some were much older than others, and not all are true folksongs. But ‘folksong’ can never have a very rigid definition, and most of the melodies that had not originated as folksongs had taken on folksong-like characteristics over a period of time; in other words, they had become well known amongst the general populace and were treated as if folksongs, subjected to minor modifications and often transmitted orally, even if they had originated as composed art music. Thus it is convenient, if only partially accurate, to refer to them all as folksong melodies.
The Accompaniments: General Approach and Treatment of Voices
Authors: Cooper Barry
Published: November 2023

Most of the melodies set by Beethoven were originally monophonic, but it became increasingly common in the course of the eighteenth century for such melodies to be published with some kind of accompaniment and, later still, preludes and postludes in the manner of an aria. Whether instrumental accompaniments enhance simple folk-tunes or merely detract from them depends on one’s own perceptions, as well as on the quality of the accompaniments, and there are some musicians who might argue that a melody conceived monophonically should be left as it is.
The Hall Collection
Authors: Knapp J Merrill
Published: November 2023

IT is not often that a scholar has the opportunity to be in direct touch with the founder of a collection—particularly of one that deals, not with the twentieth century, but with Handel and the eighteenth. Many years ago, as a young American faculty member working in England, I had the privilege of meeting Dr James Hall through his old friend William C. Smith of the British Museum. Dr Hall (1899-1973), a busy physician of Deal and Walmer in Kent, was not a professional musician, scholar, or bibliographer, but an avid Handel enthusiast who had managed during an unbelievably active lifetime of medical practice to assemble bit by bit a large collection of printed editions of Handel’s works—at a time when they could usually be picked up for a few shillings—and also contemporary manuscripts, some of which were made for Frederick, Prince of Wales in the 1740s. All this was accomplished by a man of modest means and no inherited wealth who, besides his musical activities (he was an organist and choirmaster, and directed over a hundred performances for his local choral society), had a distinguished career during World War II as a sea surgeon, jumping on and off ships in the English Channel to perform emergency operations, notably during the evacuation from Dunkirk.
Early German Handel Editions during the Classical Period
Authors: Baselt Bernd
Published: November 2023

WHEN Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey on 20 April 1759 last respects were paid to him by almost everyone in cultivated English society. He was looked upon as the greatest English composer of the age, who had made London’s opera the centre of European musical culture, and had created in his oratorios the national art form of the English middle class; later he would be seen to have prepared the way in his instrumental music for the classical symphony and sonata.
Critical Reception Contemporary and Modern
Authors: Careri Enrico
Published: November 2023

WITH the publication of his Opp. II and III concertos Geminiani’s fame in England reached its summit. His abilities as a violinist, composer, and teacher were beyond dispute. Contemporary criticism, with just a few exceptions, is generally very positive—not only on account of the qualities of the music itself but also because Geminiani is credited with guiding English musical taste in the right direction by encouraging the study and performance of Corelli’s music and making a decisive contribution to the foundation of a native English school of violinists and composers.
Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni: The Rival Queens
Authors: Larue C Steven
Published: November 2023

With the arrival of Faustina Bordoni in London in the spring of 1726, the Royal Academy entered into its final phase of artistic development. During this period Handel’s operas came to dominate the stage of the King’s Theatre; by the 1727–8 season, six out of seven operas were either newly composed by Handel or were revivals of his earlier works.1 The cast of the Royal Academy company remained stable throughout these final two seasons, and as a result, the Academy boasted the finest opera company in the world at that time.
B
Authors: Clinkscale Martha Novak
Published: November 2023

B., J. See BOOMER, Jacobus: no. 4.; and BROADWOOD, John (Johannes): Square, no. 14.

BABGOCK, Alpheus and Lewis. Makers of pianos in Boston, Massachusetts. Alpheus Babcock (b Dor chester, Mass., 11 Sept. 1785-d Boston, 3 Apr. 1842) flourished as a piano builder in Boston and later in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Alpheus and his brother Lewis (b [Dorchester], 1779-d Milton, 14 Jan. 1814) trained with Benjamin Crehore (q.v.) in Milton; in 1810 the brothers began to build on their own at 44½Newbury Street, Boston. Thomas Appleton joined the firm in 1813 as an organ building associate. Crehore, formerly the Babcocks’ master, now became their journeyman due to the collapse of his own firm.
F
Authors: Clinkscale Martha Novak
Published: November 2023

F., J. G. See FICHTL, Johann Gottlieb. FABRITIUS, Pieter Leonardus [fi. c.1808]. Piano maker in The Hague, The Netherlands. DATE: 1808 STYLE: Square COMPASS: 5½oct.: FF-c4 LENGTH: 165.5 WIDTH: 57.5 DEPTH: 21.5
Assigning Antecedents to Ambiguous Pronouns: The Role of the Center of Attention as the Default Assignment
Authors: Hudson-D’Zmura Susan , Tanenhaus Michael K
Published: November 2023

Four experiments examined the use of pronouns and nouns in discourse using an on-line coherence judgment task. Ambiguous pronouns referring to the center of attention (Grosz, Joshi. and Weinstein 1983) were judged to be coherent more often and more quickly than ambiguous pronouns which did not refer to the center of attention indicating that an immediate provisional interpretation was made on the basis of the discourse structure. In addition, ambiguous pronouns were processed faster than explicit nouns when both were used to establish the discourse focus. Ambiguous pro nouns were interpreted as referring to the focused entity even when this assignment was implausible.
Centering, Global Focus, and Right-Dislocation
Authors: Grosz Barbara J , Ziv Yael
Published: November 2023

The centering framework and theory treat interactions among attentional state, choice of referring expression, and discourse coherence. Centering has been proposed to fill the role of modeling the local level of attentional state within Grosz and Sidner’s (1986) model of discourse structure. In this chapter, we demonstrate that centering can also aid in explaining a particu lar syntactic structure, right-dislocation (henceforth, RD). RD construc tions contain a pronoun and a coreferential definite description; these two expressions are used jointly to establish discourse coherence.
Recency Effects in English Inversion
Authors: Birner Betty J
Published: November 2023

Previous work (Birner 1992, 1994) has shown that the preposed constitu ent of an English inversion must not represent less familiar information within the discourse than does the postposed constituent. However, what is relevant for the felicity of an inversion is more than simply whether or not an element has been previously evoked in the discourse. An examina tion of a corpus of natural language data suggests that discourse-familiarity is a gradient notion determined by a range of factors, including prior evocation, inferability, and recency of mention.
Poulenc Et La Jeunesse
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: November 2023

The prelude consists of rudimentary organum in parallel fourths and fifths —prophetic of the opening of Ravel’s magical childhood opera, L’Enfant et les sortil èges (1920-5), when the ‘fallen’ child disrupts the cosy kitchen with his small savagery. The chant of Poulenc’s savage is even more primitive, but less heartfelt, being a metrically rigid wail down a tetrachord. The instrumental sonorities are more suggestive of dulcet Bali than of darkest Africa, but that the technique is gauche is part of its appeal; its na їvety is its integrity —which is why the music still tickles the fancy, if it does not stir the heart. The smart public at the avant-garde concert put on by the singer Jane Bathori, on 17 December, was delighted with the jeu d’esprit which offered promise of artistic fruition.
Poulenc Et Le R êve Pastoral
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: November 2023

Although the technical features Poulenc had acquired from Satie and Stravinsky are still evident in Les Biches, it is his first work that could never be mistaken for anyone else’s. Indeed, his debt to Stravinsky is as much a matter of general concept as of musical particularities. Stravinsky had created for Diaghilev a balletic Rite of Spring set in the Old Russia, and had also made a ballet about a wedding among the Russian peasantry. Poulenc’s Les Biches also celebrates a spring festival and a marriagetransported from White Russia to la Belle France, old and new.
Poulenc, La Guerre, Etla Mort
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: November 2023

A Roman Catholic by family tradition, Francis ‘lapsed’ during and after the First World War. Yet we have noted how, beneath the ostensible frivolities of his youth, his heart remained, like that of his master Satie, of a singular purity: so we need not be surprised that the death of an intimate friend and musical colleague, in a car crash in 1936, should have shattered him. That the manner of Pierre-Octave Ferroud’s death was horrendous-he suffered what Francis called a ‘decollation atroce’-must have given a raw edge to the experience of loss. Poulenc decided to make a penitential pilgrimage to the shrine of the Vierge Noire at Rocamadour, where he had a mystical experience,
Poulenc Le Bonhomme: Le Conservatisme Et L’Enfance
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: November 2023

Two years previously, in 1947, Poulenc had fulfilled a BBC commission for an orchestral work of symphonic scope. Although it is about the same length as a Haydn symphony, Poulenc was wise to call his piece Sinfonietta, for it approaches symphonic form more in the spirit of French ballet music than of Haydn or Mozart. The first movement offers the basic duality of a tight rhythmic motif in the minor, and flowing, lyrical tunes in the major. Even so, the movement proceeds kaleidoscopically; and although beautifully scored, it sounds overscored, and slightly outstays its welcome.
The Rise of the Vernacular Motet
Authors: Page Christopher
Published: November 2023

THERE is a consensus that the audience for medieval motets comprised ‘an educated élite’, ‘the intellectual élite’, ‘the educated’, or ‘men of letters’, and that motets were enjoyed in ‘very exclusive social circles’. It is apparent that these observations are basically the same, and the next chapter will be concerned with the evidence upon which they are based. For the moment, let us look in a slightly different direction. The author of one text in the Montpellier codex says that he has ‘often found many a clerk, cowl set aside, who doesn’t insist that there be a debate on logic’, and it is generally accepted that the Ars antiqua motet is connected with the recreation of masters and students in the University of Paris.
Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, and the Chanson
Authors: Page Christopher
Published: November 2023

THE Mellon chansonnier, a collection of polyphonic songs compiled in the mid-147os, has been edited and issued in a luxurious fashion. The production of such a lavish edition, including an entire volume of introductory and ancillary matter, presented the two editors, Howard Garey and Leeman Perkins, with an opportunity to consider the cultural context of the songs in the manuscript. In his introduction to the poetry, set by composers such as Busnoys, Dufay, and Ockeghem, Howard Garey declares that the poems open ‘a door to ⃛ the world so sensitively described by Johan Huizinga in The Waning of the Middle Ages’. Garey is commending what is perhaps the most famous book ever written about the later lVIiddle Ages in the North and one that enjoys a ‘legendary fame’, in the words of Reinhard Strohm.
Divisions
Authors: Moore Jerrold Northrop
Published: November 2023

Worcester is divided from the countryside westward to Broadheath by the River Severn. A century ago the river drew the division of city from country more clearly than it does today. Up to its eastern bank crowded close buildings and narrow city streets. But from certain of those streets, and from Worcester Cathedral, you could look across the river to an almost uninterrupted landscape of field and countryside opposite-to the agricultural and pastoral world whose natural cycle still shaped so much of life then.
The Looked-for Genius
Authors: Moore Jerrold Northrop
Published: November 2023

He has seen fit to fasten upon his own back the burden of an unwieldy, impossible scheme for three oratorios on the subject of the founding of the Church; and until that scheme is done with, and Elgar seeks inspiration in a subject of another type, the most sanguine of us cannot expect much from him in the way of fresh or really vital music. The wisest thing for him to do now is to abandon the idea of a third oratorio on the subject and turn his mind to other themes. These may bring him new inspiration and a new idiom; at present he is simply riding post-haste along the road that leads to nowhere.
The Land of Lost Content
Authors: Moore Jerrold Northrop
Published: November 2023

In remote north-western Scotland, the beginning was merely strange. After many telegrams of enquiry to friends, one to the Stuart-Wortleys drew response. From Gairloch Edward replied on 9 August: I do not know how to thank you for your telegrams: we were nearly mad to get any news & our friends seemed to fail us thinking, no doubt, that we had moved on. We had intended to do so but we are thirty miles from a station; the means of communication, I mean transport, were the motor-charabanc-the hotel motors (two) to Achnasheen & the steamship to Lochalsh. The public vehicles were all comandeered to carry the territorials & were so occupied for two days-gradually all the guests left & we are now the only people left except an elderly gentle an & his wife.
Beyond Busnoys
Authors: Wegman Rob C
Published: November 2023

The masses Petrus apostolus, Beata viscera, O lumen ecclesie, and Sicut spina rosam form a separate group in Obrecht’s mass oeuvre’, they share a range of features not found in other works. At the same time there are differences of emphasis between them suggesting that they represent successive stages in a continued stylistic development. That development, which will be the main subject of this chapter, must have taken place in the years around 1480. The style of Petrus apostolus points to a date in the midto late 1470s, Beata viscera is believed to have been copied in 1481, and O lumen ecclesie and Sicut spina rosam bridge the stylistic distance between these works and Missa De Sancto Martino of 1486.
Beyond Fortuna
Authors: Wegman Rob C
Published: November 2023

The news of Antoine Busnoys’s death, in November 1492, could hardly have left Obrecht untouched. It closed a major chapter in his life, from possible early encounters in the late 1460s to the six years in which both men worked at Bruges, 1485-91. More importantly, it came at a particularly sensitive time in his own musical career. Busnoys was relatively young when he died, probably under 55, and about fifteen years older than Obrecht himself.
The Last Journey
Authors: Wegman Rob C
Published: November 2023

In the summer of 1503 Obrecht disappears from our view. For at least fourteen months after his departure from Antwerp we have only threads of biographical evidence, which cannot be woven into a seamless historical narrative. There are hints that the composer was active at the court of Emperor Maximilian I, and perhaps the chapel of Pope Julius II—but all we know for certain is that he was appointed in Ferrara in September 1504, and died there within eleven months.
Between Orfeo and Alceste (1762–1766)
Authors: Howard Patricia
Published: November 2023

Durazzo’s claim, in his position for a pension for Gluck,1 that the composer ‘is sought after by every Italian town’ receives some support from the commission, in the summer of 1762, for Gluck’s next opera, Il trionfo di Clelia. Documents of a very different kind from Khevenhüller’s and Zinzendorf ‘s diaries and the Viennese and Parisian journal articles illuminate the genesis of this work. An exchange of letters between Count Luigi Bevilacqua, in charge of the theatre in Bologna, and his agent in Vienna, Abate Lodovico Preti, show Gluck’s negotiating skills.
From Cythère to Alceste (1775–1776)
Authors: Howard Patricia
Published: November 2023

Gluck responded to the rumours of Berton’s inadequate preparation of Cythère in a long letter to Du Roullet, who was working on the translation and adaptation of Alceste, and also preparing a libretto on the subject of Iphigenie en Tauride, later finished by Guillard.1 Gluck’s letter, besides affording a window onto his working relationship with his librettist, also conveys the stress of composition, mentioned increasingly frequently from this point onwards.
Death (1787)
Authors: Howard Patricia
Published: November 2023

On the fourteenth of November, Gluck entertained two friends, recently arrived from Paris, in his house in the Wieden. On his doctor’s advice, Gluck regularly went out in his carriage after dining, to enjoy the benefit of fresh air and moderate exercise. After the meal, coffee and liqueurs were served, and after dispensing drinks to the two guests, Gluck’s wife left to order the carriage. In her absence, one of the guests refused his proffered drink. Gluck, who had always been fond of wine, but who was now strictly forbidden alcohol on account of its inflammatory effect, urged his friend to empty the glass, and when the latter excused himself, he feigned anger at the refusal, gulped down the drink, and quickly wiped his mouth, asking his guests, with a jest, not to betray him to his wife. She returned.
Analytical and Historical Contexts
Authors: Haimo Ethan
Published: November 2023

Each of the preceding nine chapters has consisted of an analysis of a single symphony by Joseph Haydn. Perhaps each of these analyses is illuminating in its own right, even if taken in isolation. However, in presenting analyses of all of the movements (and the multimovemental organization) of nine chronologically ordered symphonies by a single composer, the implicit assumption has been that there is something essential to be gained by studying these compositions in their entirety, as a group, and in chronological order.
OLD POLISH MUSIC
Authors: Thomas Adrian
Published: November 2023

IN parallel with the self-questioning that followed Scontri, there was another period of reflection after Refrain. Partly because of Gorecki’s ill health no works appeared for almost two years; when one did, it initiated a series of four exploratory chamber works, fulfilling much the same function in the late 1960s as the Genesis cycle had in the first half of the decade. The title Muzyczka (La Musiquette, or Little Music) is somewhat ironically non-committal, because all four works in the series are, according to the composer, about character (where Genesis, according to the composer, was concerned primarily with technical matters) and have a temperament that is anything but puny.
SACRED SONGS
Authors: Thomas Adrian
Published: November 2023

THE 1960s were years of maturation for many Polish composers, as their individual styles and outlooks crystallized. Lutostawski and Penderecki were seen abroad as the symbols of the Polish avant-garde, of the so-called ‘Polish school’. This tag held a grain of truth, but like most labels it undervalued diversity in trying to quantify a new phe¬nomenon: the emergence of vital new music from an unexpected source. The Poles were challenging the domination of composers of other nationalities, many of whom were perceived in the West as holding the key to the future of music. As unexpected newcomers, Polish composers had played briefly in the late 1950s and early 1960s with new idioms and technical ploys from the West before discarding or dismantling them as they sought their own path.
Writing the Score
Authors: Hurley David Ross
Published: November 2023

Investigation of Handel’s compositional process involves consulting a number of sources. The most important of these include Handel’s composing scores in the British Library and the sketches and fragments in the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge. Useful in determining the first performance version of a work—and sometimes interesting from the standpoint of compositional process—are the ‘conducting scores’ provided by Handel’s copyists, which now reside in the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Hamburg.
Handel as Harmonious Blacksmith: Changes in Tonal Structure
Authors: Hurley David Ross
Published: November 2023

The composing scores of Handel’s oratorios include a multitude of revisions involving harmonic structure. This chapter will examine certain recurring types of revisions made possible by techniques of harmonic construction that typify Baroque composition. Such revisions demonstrate that, ironically, Handel often changed harmonic structure in order to alter musical realms other than harmony, including such elements of inner form as phrase structure and sectional proportions, as well as text-setting and dramatic impact. Accordingly, the first category of revisions examined comprises large-scale changes of cadential goals; such changes, made for various reasons, influence a wide variety of musical parameters. The second part of the chapter explores adjustments of harmonic balance and formal proportion, while the third examines the creation of new harmonic areas within movements.
Poliziano, Primavera, and Perugia 431: New Light on Fortuna desperata
Authors: Meconi Honey
Published: November 2023

Fortuna Desperata was the most popular Italian song of the fifteenth century and one of the most frequently used of all polyphonic models of the Renaissance, inspiring more than forty derivative settings over a period of almost seventy-five years by masters such as Josquin, Obrecht, Isaac, and Senfl, as well as numerous lesser-known and anonymous composers.
Patrician Institutions and their Medieval Heritage
Authors: Kendrick Robert L
Published: November 2023

The young Milanese musicians of this study entered institutions of varying character, thereby to some degree conditioning their musical life. From the Middle Ages through the Settecento, the sheer number of monasteries and their weight in urban prestige were impressive, although hardly atypical. Of the forty-one female houses in the Milan of 1600, polyphony would be recorded at some two-thirds.The art also became widespread in the extra-urban foundations of the diocese.
Monastic Musical Traditions
Authors: Kendrick Robert L
Published: November 2023

For that plurality of Milanese patrician women in cloisters, the cultural markers of the orders—patron(ess) saints, monastic Rules, liturgical uses—provided self-identification, social grounding, occasions for devotion, and possibilities for musical development. The preceding three chapters have highlighted the differing traditions of the various religioni, and thus suggest that to speak of ‘nuns’ en bloc is an over-generalization.
Nuns’ Music in the Milanese World-view
Authors: Kendrick Robert L
Published: November 2023

Two printed objects, spanning the period, highlight the profoundly supernatural and transcendent ideology of urban society, including its musical nuns: the I 578 city map in which the Trinity (having ended the plague) hovers over the Lombard capital; and Filippo Picinelli’s encyclopaedic compendium of the metaphoric and emblematic content of the natural world, his Mondo simbolico. For women like Angela Flaminia Confaloniera, music had meaning as part of a larger, divinely ordained world order: it was a vehicle to communicate eternal truths of spirituality and cosmic harmony. But given the polyvalence of symbols and texts in early modern Milan, it is important to delineate the transcendent content of nuns’ music, both for performers themselves and for their urban audiences, with the maximum specificity possible, and with attention to the actual music linked to such symbolism.
Conclusion
Authors: Kendrick Robert L
Published: November 2023

On the most immediate level, female monastic music in Milan had everything to do with the city’s patriciate and urban politics. Family ties organized the social and musical aspects of nuns’ lives: the patrician composition of monasteries, the financial and social links, even the reciprocal influence of musical styles flourishing in the ecclesiastical institutions of the urban élite.
The Evolution of the Chant Tune
Authors: Wilson Ruth M
Published: November 2023

Chanting the prose psalms or canticles in harmony is a unique and distinguishing feature of the English liturgy. It has its own highly specialized genre of chant with an official name, Anglican Chant, a distinctive written form, and conventions which theoretically govern its performance. Over the long period of its development, from the fifteenth century to the present, English chant has evolved from a wholly improvised practice to one which is partially improvised from written music. Since the harmonized form of commonly used liturgical melodies began to be written down in the 1660s, church musicians have composed melodies and harmonized them especially for this purpose. In the old Sarum liturgy written chants were not needed, since familiarity with the canon of liturgical melodies and extempore methods of harmonizing them were required of all singers. Even in the simplified English liturgy of the Reformation, the old melodies continued to be used in a similar fashion. The routine practice of writing chant tunes out, except in the special circumstances already noted, coincided with new composition by individual composers after 1660.
The Printed Sources
Authors: Brookes Virginia
Published: November 2023

Please refer to the Abbreviations for a complete list of the printed sources which are referred to in this catalogue. Most are given as references of instrumental and vocal concordances to the keyboard pieces. There are, however, three important printed sources of keyboard music, Parthenia (1612), Parthenia In Violata (1625), and Musick's Handmaid (1663), the contents of which are given below. Melothesia, an instructional volume by Matthew Locke (1673), has not been discussed in detail since most of its contents appear to be post-1660: it has been quoted only as it contains concordances to a handful of pieces.
Vienna and London, 1780–1800
Authors: Komlós Katalin
Published: November 2023

The last two decades of the eighteenth century brought the first golden age of the pianoforte. The instruments reached an advanced technical level, and the keyboard music of the mature classical style responded to the new possibilities. The grand pianoforte (or Hammerflügel in Austria and Germany) became a solo concert instrument, as no earlier keyboard instrument had been. Its first great players were its first great composers as well: Mozart, Clementi, Beethoven, Dussek.
Sonatas: Accompanied and Unaccompanied
Authors: Komlós Katalin
Published: November 2023

‘The keyboard sonata is set for the keyboard either alone or with another instrument such as the violin or flute,’ stated F. W. Marpurg, German theorist and composer, in 1762.1 This definition clearly reflects the interchangeability of the solo and accompanied keyboard sonata in the second half of the eighteenth century.