bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
1925-1930
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

If we consider Vaughan Williams’s output between 1924 and 1930 and add to it the amount of teaching, conducting, lecturing and studying which was his lot, we can but marvel again at his energy and his powers of concentration. In these seven years, apart from minor works such as songs and arrangements, he began work on three operas-Sir John in Love, Riders to the Sea and The Poisoned Kiss-he sketched the first two movements of a pianoforte concerto and put them aside for six years, he wrote Flos Campi, Sancta Civitas, the Violin Concerto and Job. And he was joint editor of another hymn-book and a book of carols.
1931-1943
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

The music of Job was played for the second time, conducted by the composer, in a broadcast performance from the London Regional station at Savoy Hill on 13 February 1931. By now British ballet had been born, with the foundation, early in 1930, of the Camargo Society. Geoffrey Keynes and his brother Maynard (whose wife was Lydia Lopokova) were among the leaders of this brave venture, and it was decided-on the insistence of Gustav Holst-that Job should be produced in the Society’s fourth season. The Keynes brothers and T. F. Dunhill bore the expense and Ninette de Valois was invited to be the choreographer. She and Lilian Baylis, of the Old Vic, had already seen and approved the Raverat settings on a model stage which Dr. Keynes and Mrs. Raverat had made in 1927. Miss de Valois studied the whole range of Blake’s drawings in order to gain suggestions for attitudes and gestures.
Common Sense and the Language of criticism
Authors: Frith Simon
Published: November 2023

In Chapter 1 I suggested that value judgments are the common currency of popular culture. Anyone who’s any sort of pop fan is used to the arguments involved—that’s a good song, a good tune, a good sound, a good beat —but such judgments have been of surprisingly little interest to cultural theorists. What’s going on when these remarks are made? What’s being described? What’s being inferred? What’s the point of making this judgment of this record in these terms at this moment?
Toward a Popular Aesthetic
Authors: Frith Simon
Published: November 2023

The academic study of popular music has been limited by the assumption that the sounds somehow reflect or represent “a people:” The analytic problem has been to trace the connections back, from the work (the score, the song, the beat) to the social groups who make and use it. What’s at issue is homology, some sort of structural relationship between material and cultural forms. From this perspective musical meaning is socially constructed; our musical pleasures are defined by our social circumstances. Marxist and Weberian musicologists alike argue that music is a form of ideological expression, not just in broad institutional terms (how it is played and heard), but also aesthetically, through the expressive dependence of the organizing principle of the music as a structure of willed sounds on the organizing principle of society as a structure of power.
Introduction
Authors: Sherr Richard
Published: November 2023

Rima la musica e poi le parole. According to Friedrich Blume, part of the ‘genesis of modern historical musicology’ itself is due to the music of Josquin des Prez. He tells a charming little story of how a ‘very young man’ came up to him one day in 192 7 full of enthusiasm (more strongly, actual ‘love’) for theMissa Pange lingua, the first mass by Josquin desPrez to appear in modern edition (in volume 5 of Ambros’s Geschichte derMusik ).The young man begged Blume to allow his students to sing the work, which he had ‘copied and mimeographed’, that is, copied by hand onto those purple-finger-staining sheets that some of us still remember, in a true ‘labour oflove’ (emphasis on the labour). That performance, born of youthful enthusiasm for the music, was, according to Blume, the fansetorigo of the torrent of words and editions that has appeared in the seventy years since, not merely about Josquin but about all of ‘early music’. The effect of singing the 400-year-old work was such that it awakened in Blume and his students a burning desire to know more, to hear more, to sing more of the music not only by Josquin but by his contemporaries. As a direct result of his experience with bringing the music ofJosquin to life, Blume founded the series Das Chorwerk, to allow more Renaissance music to be brought to life in modern edition. Countless editions and scholarly studies have followed, intending to bring more music and even the composers of that music to ‘life’. The flow is now subsiding under postmodern pressure, but it still has not been completely stifled.
Who Was Josquin?
Authors: Wegman Rob C
Published: November 2023

For all his legendary fame, Josquin desPrez remains a surprisingly elusive historical figure. Administrative records that refer to him with certainty are few, and give us no more than the sketchiest outline of a career, with little or no unusual detail to suggest a musician of unusual talent. Were it not for the quality of his music (whose distribution began in earnest in the 1490s), and for written evidence of the adoration of his contemporaries (surviving piecemeal for the 1510s, but proliferating rapidly thereafter), Josquin’s documented career would hardly have seemed of special historical interest. As a result, we are left to see the composer largely through the admiring eyes of his later contemporaries. It is through their hands that his music has reached our time. It is their image of Josquin the creative artist, the human being, that complements the skeletal image that emerges from the documents. Yet modern scholarship has learnt not to trust Josquin’s contemporaries-at least not unconditionally. They appropriated his music enthusiastically, made it their own, and perpetuated his memory, yet it is unclear whether their image of the composer may not be more revealing of contemporary pressures and concerns than of the man himself They reinterpreted his compositions, omitting or adding voice-parts, changing rhythmic and melodic details, retexting, re arranging, and revising them.
Four-Voice Motets
Authors: Finscher Ludwig
Published: November 2023

Four-Voice counterpoint was established as the compositional norm, at least in sacred music, by Josquin and his contemporaries. Not surprisingly therefore, four-voice compositions form the nucleus of Josquin’s motet oeuvre. The shift from three-part to four-part writing has not yet been investigated thoroughly. Four-part polyphony had been reserved for exceptional works, both in mass and motet composition, in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, both on the Continent (Machaut and the following generation) and in England (Dunstable and the music of the Old Hall manu script). It remained exceptional and confined to these genres until about 1450, but with a tendency to spread within these genres, a tell-tale case being the three-voice motets by Ciconia to which someone, very probably the compiler of Bologna Q 15, added a contratenor, roughly between 1425 and 1435 (in Utte peromnes/Ingensalumpnus, which is for three voices in Bologna Q 15, the compiler of Oxford 213 did the same at about the same time, and in the Veneta as well). Around 1450, four-voice writing was firmly established and became quickly dominant in the new (and in that sense again exceptional) genre of the cyclic mass, perhaps the first example being the anonymousMissa Caput, which proved to be decisively influential on the Continent.
Odes
Authors: Holman Peter
Published: November 2023

BY and large, Purcell’s odes have received short shrift in modern times. The texts are routinely dismissed as inept and embarassingly sycophantic, and attention has largely been confined to the three works currently available in miniature score: Welcome to all the pleasures’ 2339, Hail, bright Cecilia’ Z328, and Come, ye sons of art, away’ 2323. The original volumes in Works I containing the odes were published between 1878 and 1926, and have been out of print for decades. They are only now being replaced by volumes in Works II, and some first-rate pieces are still virtually unknown. Purcell’s odes are important because nearly all of them can be dated precisely-unlike most of the music discussed so far in this book.
Recognition
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

Recognition, of a kind, was not far away. Novello’s accepted another part-song, ‘O Happy Eyes’, to Mrs Elgar’s words, in March 1894, and Elgar composed a ceremonial piece for brass, organ, and strings, Sursum Corda, for the Duke of York’s visit to Worcester in April. Holidays in Sussex and, for seven weeks, at Garmisch in the Bavarian Highlands, are a sign of more relaxed nerves. But the greatest tonic is success, a sign that one’s work is wanted, and the interest shown in Elgar by Hugh Blair, rewarded by the dedication of The Black Knight and by orchestrating Blair’s Advent Cantata for him, was enough to stimulate further creative efforts. In July 1894 Elgar turned again to Longfellow and began work on Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf In doing so, he was not only setting a favourite poet of his and his mother’s—while in Heidelberg in 1892. he had sent her a letter describing a students’ torchlight procession, adding, ‘I must send a line from here about which we have read & thought so much ⃛ it did remind me of Hyperion & the beer scandal etc etc’—but he was, if unconciously, following a fashion for Scandinavian lore which can also be traced in William Morris’s Icelandic Sagas, in Delius’s Fennimore and Gerda, and in Schoenberg’s setting of Jacobsen’s Gurrelieder. At the same time, on returning from Garmisch, he worked on a suite of six part-songs of Bavarian Dances, to words which Alice had written in imitation of Bavarian folk-songs.
‘Variations’, and the ‘Friends pictured within’
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

In approaching the zenith of Elgar’s creative life and the apogee of his national fame, it will be necessary to abandon strict chronological biographical methods and to follow his progress by means of the personal associations and early histories of some of the works, and by a closer study of his relationships with a growing circle of friends and acquaintances—and enemies. Despite his grumbling to Jaeger and his almost neurotic preoccupation with wider public and material recognition—though, as has been seen, he had in some respects a poor opinion of public taste—Elgar was fully aware that it was only in Worcestershire that he was able to work in the concentrated quiet that he needed. The peace and beauty of the countryside were as necessary a creative stimulant to him as they were to Beethoven, and he found them in full measure at the cottage, Birchwood, among the woods and within walking distance of the British Camp and all the other associations with Caractacus. Alice and he first stayed there on 16 May 1898. When he wrote to Jaeger during the summer of 1898, he would put ‘Birchwood (once more!)’ or ‘Birchwood (in peace)’ or ‘at Forli but just leaving for Birchwood Deo Gratias !’ at the head of his letters. But it was from ‘Forli’, when the woods were ‘decidedly damp and rheumaticky—unromantic just now’, that on 24 October 1898 he wrote to him: ‘Since I’ve been back [from a visit to London] I have sketched a set of Variations (orkestra) on an original theme: the Variations have amused me because I’ve labelled ‘em with the nicknames of my particular friends—you are Nimrod. That is to say I’ve written the variations each one to represent the mood of the “party”—I’ve liked to imagine the ‘party’ writing the var: him (or her) self and have written what I think they wd. have written—if they were asses enough to compose—it’s a quaint idea & the result is amusing to those behind the scenes & won’t affect the hearer who “nose nuffin”. What think you?’
Finale
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

In 1927 Elgar was seventy. The anniversary coincided with one of the lowest points that his reputation among the arbiters of fashion had reached. A birthday concert at Queen’s Hall was given to a hall no more than half full. ‘I have had some satisfaction & even pleasure in my life,’ he wrote to Charles Volkert who had been head of Schott’s London branch when Elgar was in London in the 188os, ‘but have no pleasant memories connected with music.’ It is a terrifying and tiresome statement, for surely even that year he must have had pleasure from a concert in Manchester on 20 January when, to salute him in his seventieth year, Adolph Brodsky, then seventy-five, had returned to the Halle platform to play the Violin Concerto? Elgar conducted. Froissart, In the South, Sea Pictures, and the Variations were also in the programme. Memories of Richter’s heyday in Manchester and of his own triumphs there, the presence of Brodsky symbolizing the interest of a European generation in his work: was there nothing pleasant in the occasion? On 26 June Schuster, himself now seventy-five, performed his last generous act of homage to his friend, arranging performances of the three chamber works at ‘The Hut’ (by then re-named the ‘Long White Cloud’) by Sammons, Murdoch, Reed, and others.
Coda
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

Anybody who spends some time among the great collection of letters to Elgar preserved at Worcester will come away with an overwhelming impression of the respect and affection with which he was surrounded and which he and his music inspired. Yet throughout his life, as we have seen, he remained lonely and unsure. When he was old and full of honours, a young couple with Worcester <;onnections spent an evening with him. He was brimming with humour and good stories. He played them records of his music, striding about the room humming. When they had gone, he asked his niece: ‘Do you think they really loved my music?’ Many, like A.H. Fox Strangways, knew him only as a man with an ‘endless curiosity about everyday things and his power of finding fun in chance people and ordinary incidents’. They would never have suspected the dark side of his soul that was bared to Jaeger and Lord Northampton. The intellectuals who despised his patriotism and emotion and found his liking for the racing fraternity an incomprehensible aberration could never have realized the sensitivity that the mask of worldliness concealed. Langford said of Mahler’s music: ‘With his lighter hand he draws us to and with his heavier thrusts us from him.’ These words could equally be applied to Elgar’s personality.
Cross-Currents
Authors: Smallman Basil
Published: November 2023

FROM the middle of the nineteenth century, for at least a hundred years, works for large keyboard ensembles began increasingly to occupy a central position in the chamber field. One reason for this was certainly the widespread success of Schumann’s inspirational Piano Quintet, which, by establishing what was virtually a new genre, with a specific aura of Romanticism, created an immediate ideal for composers of varied backgrounds to attempt to emulate. Naturally it was those of Austro-German origin who took a leading role, providing a continuing line of descent, which was to survive unbroken at least until the time of Schoenberg and Hindemith. But in other parts of Europe also, after a somewhat tentative start, a significant flow of new works began, often finely crafted and of an engagingly varied character. Links with the central tradition were continually in evidence, not least because many of the composers involved received their basic musical training in Germany; but fresh approaches, frequently inflected by national or folk ‘dialects’, created cross-currents which ruffled, beneficially, the surface of the German ‘mainstream’, both absorbing strength from it and infusing new elements into it. Thus, to take the simplest of cases, the intellectual discipline gained by Dvorak through his immersion in German symphonic ideals was paralleled, obversely, by the rustic vigour imparted to various of Brahms’s works through his predilection for folk music, especially that of Hungarian origin. The synthesis achieved in these and other instances led, naturally, to an increased degree of cosmopolitanism; but this was offset by the prominently nationalist features found in the work of several of the most independent-minded composers of the time—those particularly whose origins lay in countries most geographically distant from central Europe.
Basic electronics and acoustics
Authors: Mornington-West Allen
Published: November 2023

This chapter attempts to summarize some of the electrical and acoustical terms commonly found in the audio industry. There is not the space to cover any one item in depth, though there should be no great inaccuracy as a consequence.

The basic units and symbols which make up the SI system of units (Systeme International d’Unités) are given in Appendix 1. The names of the units have often been derived from the names of past scientists and are in internationally agreed use. The wide range of values which these units may have requires an efficient scheme of notation. For example, the range of sound pressure levels (SPL) to which the human ear is sensitive extends to more than one million to one-from the threshold of hearing to the threshold of pain. Although the SPL at the threshold of hearing could be written as 0.000020 Pa, it is more usually written as 20 µ Pa. The µ stands for ‘micro’ and is a shorthand way of expressing the ratio of a millionth. The range of common multipliers is also given in Appendix 1. It can be seen that they rise in a ratio of a thousand to one.
Mixing consoles: Analogue
Authors: Swettenham Richard
Published: November 2023

In order to cover all the features likely to be met in consoles for recording use, this chapter will describe the units and systems found in a typical console for multitrack recording, considered mainly from the operational rather than the engineering design point of view. By way of illustration, Figures 7.1 and 7.2 show the controls layout and block schematic diagrams for a console having extensive computer-assisted mixing facilities. Plate 4 shows the same console in a 36 channel version.

The main factors of importance here are: source and input impedances, noise in relation to gain, and gain range and headroom. The majority of studio microphones have nominal impedances in the range of 150-300 ohms, and for practical purposes may be regarded as 200 ohms. Almost all capacitor microphones fall into this group, though some have provision for internal connection for 50 ohms. This gives half the output voltage, which is sometimes useful to avoid overloading the input of equipment basically intended for use with low-level dynamic microphones. With the average studio console it is not useful or desirable.
Tape recorders: Analogue
Authors: Ford (Revised by Keith Spencer-Allen) Hugh
Published: November 2023

Magnetic tape is constructed using a base film to support the magnetic layer, or coating. This magnetic coating is applied on one side of the base film, whilst an additional non-magnetic coating is frequently applied to the reverse side. Modern magnetic tapes use polyester as the base film, marketed under a number of trade names such as Mylar from Du Pont or Melinex from ICI. Various grades of polyester, or more properly polyethylene terephthalate, are available from the manufacturers and have widely differing mechanical properties.
Electronic music
Authors: Gibbs (Revised by Peter Howell) Jonathan
Published: November 2023

Since the tentative beginning of electronic music at the turn of the century it has been hoped that the electronic manipulation of sound might, in theory, offer the composer the most glorious opportunities to explore new forms of musical expression. But there have been major stumbling-blocks. The penalties have been the long hours spent slaving over a tape editing block, turning crude physics-laboratory waveforms into pleasing sounds, programming sluggish computers in low-level languages to perform tasks they were not designed to do. For the professional composer of electronic music those long hours have been a significant barrier, because, unlike the composer for conventional instruments, he has to be intimately concerned not only with the music the instruments will play but also with the very design of the instruments themselves. Too often that has meant a struggle, and if it takes him a day to create one really good note it is inevitable that integrity must suffer.
Film
Authors: Hartstone Graham , Spath Tony
Published: November 2023

This chapter looks at the many aspects of film sound, from recording and mixing through to the finished soundtrack as it is exhibited in the cinema. Almost all high-quality film soundtracks today are mixed for a stereo variable-area optical soundtrack that can reproduce four channels of sound in the cinema, Left, Centre, Right, and Surround (LCRS). By far the most widely used system for this is Dolby Stereo. Therefore this chapter mainly describes the stages used in the production and exhibition of Dolby Stereo soundtracks. Digital soundtracks are now a reality in cinemas, and these are also discussed, although it will be very many years before they reach the world-wide saturation of analogue optical soundtracks on 35-mm film. Compatible digital/analogue prints will therefore be with us for the foreseeable future.
Chamber Music
Authors: Musgrave Michael
Published: November 2023

Important as was Brahms’s Requiem in projecting his name to a wider public, it only placed him in a perspective of a certain kind, one relating directly to the inherently conservative world of the choral society and religious music. His instrumental compositions were still only known to a limited entourage focussing on the circles of Joachim and Hellmesberger in Vienna. The numerous performances of the Requiem, which quickly went the rounds of the choral societies after its first full performance in 1869, were in no way matched by the works which became central pillars of his reputation, the piano variations and chamber and orchestral works. Indeed, it was the popular piano and vocal works, the Waltzes and Hungarian Dances, which were best known after the Requiem, as Wagner’s various barbed comments reflect.
Five Summer Songs (I972) Ronald Perera (born 1941) Text by Emily Dickinson
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The songs show considerable delicacy and flair in the clear texture and skilful vocal writing. A flexible, light-toned mezzo-soprano or baritone would perhaps be best suited to them as too much heaviness might limit the range of dynamics. The songs form a nicely balanced group with good contrast and the accompaniments are varied and fluent.
Five Lyrics of the T’ang Dynasty (I947) John Beckwith (born I927) Translation by Witter Bynner
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This brief cycle by John Beckwith is a gem. One rarely finds such assurance and panache combined with natural musicality and a perfect dovetailing of voice and piano. The music’s appeal is immediate. A variety of contrasting moods is displayed during the cycle’s short span. The singer should feel completely comfortable throughout.
Five Songs (I978) Andre Previn (horn I929) Text by Philip Larkin
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

These fluent and pleasing songs, by a composer of wide-ranging musical tastes and experiences, show great flair and an innate feeling for vocal timbre. American composers seem to excel at setting texts in a relaxed way so that they are delivered without exaggerated accents. As in the simpler songs of Ives, the message is conveyed calmly and clearly with complete vocal comfort, and there is no danger of losing the words in the music. The accompaniments are delicately judged and the whole effect is unusually sensitive and simple. The songs would not tax the technique of a comparative beginner since they lie so smoothly in the voice and the timing of the phrases follows the natural flow of the text. The musical idiom is fresh, tuneful and instantly appealing, with gently shifting tonality.
Bucolics op. 28 (I968) James Wilson (horn I922) Text by John Clare
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

These three songs have a wonderful freedom and naturalness, and the rhythm of the texts is most delicately and expertly handled. The words fit the music supremely well. As in all good vocal writing, there is physical enjoyment to be had in the action of enunciating and, in some cases, lingering over the expressive syllables of the resonant texts. The whole effect is fresh and exuberant. The drama flows with the music, as do the dynamics which are entirely appropriate at all times. The vocal range is comfortable for the singer, causing no strain or pinching on high-lying words. The musical idiom is straightforward and it has a strong individual character although the composer’s touch is light. The piano figurations are attractively varied.
Twelve Moravian Songs (I957) Karel Husa (born I92I) Translation by Ruth Martin
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Karel Husa, a Czechoslovakian composer now resident in the USA, has a most distinguished and varied output. These folksongs from his native land are a fine example of his sensitivity and expertise. The r 2 brief items are properly balanced in mood and style to provide plenty of contrast, despite the overall simplicity of the vocal lines.
A Garland for Marjory Fleming (I969) Richard Rodney Bennett (born I936) Text by Marjory Fleming
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Richard Rodney Bennett’s cycle is an ideal and most tempting introduction to the repertory for a young singer. The unaffected, poignant charm and natural wit of the texts by Marjory Fleming (1803-u), a Scottish child, contribute to the piece’s entertaining and enchanting effect. Misspellings in the text are left uncorrected except, as the composer says, when it would affect correct pronunciation.
The Pensive Traveller (1981) Donald Crockett (born 1951) Text by Henry David Thoreau
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The outstandingly attractive, clear and simple appearance of this printed score gives it an immediate advantage. Other signs of enterprise and thoughtfulness are found in the excellent layout and the concise information given on the back page beside the full text. The publishers are to be congratulated, and it is to be hoped that singers will respond to their efforts.
Beautiful Lie the Dead (I954) Jeremy Dale Roberts (born I934)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Each of these brief but finely wrought songs is dedicated to a distinguished figure from an older generation: the composers William Alwyn, Gerald Finzi and Howard Ferguson respectively. Beautiful Lie the Dead fits perfectly well into the English song tradition, and it has a fresh, distinctive appeal. The composer shows a good command of style, combined with an instinctive feeling for graceful vocal lines and the shaping of words.
Songs from the Thousand and One Nights (1959, revised 1967) Richard Steinitz (horn 1938) Translation by Powys Mathers
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This is a most striking and imaginative cycle of five songs, the third of which is especially arresting. A strong personality is evident in the voice part, to which the piano accompaniment is particularly suited. The music is flexible and there is a sense of constant flux in the changing tempos and moods which are occasionally mercurial and always colourful.
Five Songs (I95I) Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) Text by William Blake
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The wonderfully invigorating and original music of this composer is less often heard in the United Kingdom than it ought to be. His considerable output of songs belongs to the standard 20th-century repertory since it has the rare quality of being strikingly memorable through relatively simple musical means.
Mirages (1970) William Alwyn (1905-85) Text by William Alwyn
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This fine and consistent composer, whose work is widely admired yet unwarrantedly neglected, will be greatly missed. Mirages, a substantial and passionate cycle, is a superb example of Alwyn’s assurance, musical depth, refinement and warm conviction. Almost every song is a tour de force in itself: the baritone’s resources will be fully stretched and the invigorating piano parts are similarly testing.
The Seven Deadly Sins (1979) Robert Beaser (born 1954) Text by Anthony Hecht
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

It is a pleasure to find a work so attractively presented with an admirably clear and helpful set of performance notes in the score. The notes contain a succinct guide to the symbols used; the insight they give into this American composer’s conception of the interpretation will greatly benefit both singer and pianist. Subtle vocal inflections and changes of timbre are suggested in readily understood terms. Both tenor and baritone versions of the vocal part are printed in the score. The methods of notation used vary according to the characteristics of each song, but all possible questions are answered in the introduction for the composer has considered all practicalities. In particular, the more avant-garde features, most of which are now standard practice, are lucidly explained. All the composer’s markings in the text show meticulous forethought and are to be observed carefully.
Voices of the Prophets op. 41 (1952) Alan Bush (born 1900)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This inspired and substantial work from one of our senior composers deserves a prominent place in the repertory. It was commissioned by Peter Pears and first performed by him and Noel Mewton-Wood in r9 53. The confident sweep and visionary intensity of the music is in close empathy with the texts and is sustained throughout in a most impressive manner. The composer’s characteristically forthright, committed and authoritative approach is evident in all four movements. The work is truly on a grand scale.
Sung Songs nos. 4 and 5 (1971) Barbara Pentland (horn 1912) Translation by Clara M. Cadlin
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This distinguished Canadian composer is one of the early pioneers of the 12-note technique in her country. Her sensitivity to the voice is apparent in these songs. They are the second of two groups of Chinese settings, and more advanced stylistically than the earlier set (Three Sung Songs, 1964). They contain some musical difficulties but are extremely rewarding to a skilful and painstaking artist.
At the Edge of Time (1982) Brian Elias (born 1948) Text by Mervyn Peake
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The composer’s beautifully bold handwriting instantly encourages the performer. The refinement and delicacy characteristic of his music is at once apparent. Such meticulous details of nuance and accent and flexible and subtle rhythms demand dedication from the singer, who will be amply rewarded. Bar-lines are omitted in the third song and again at the very end of the cycle, but conventional notation is otherwise used. The musical idiom is atonal, but constant repetition of intervals and pitch cells are a good means of orientation for singers worried by intonation problems. The dramatic scope is very wide indeed. This is a superb vehicle for a tenor of high musicianship and powerful presence.
Songs in Praise ofKrishna (1970) George Rochberg (born I 9I 8) Translation from the Bengali, edited by Edward C. Dimock Jr. and Denise Levertov
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This ambitious and masterly cycle of 14 songs is, as the composer says, operatic in concept; it runs the whole gamut of emotions, portraying the love story of the beautiful girl Radha and the god Krishna of ancient Indian legend. It is a rewarding vehicle for a gifted performer as there is every opportunity to display the widest variety of technique and dramatic colouring and mood, without putting any strain on the voice.
Eight Shaker Songs (1985) Lyell Cresswell (horn 1944) 19th-century Shaker texts
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The work of this New Zealand composer is full of boldness and originality. His use of the voice is highly imaginative and sometimes strenuous, but when the awkward corners are mastered, the results are stunning.
Sun, Moon and Stars (1978) Elizabeth Maconchy (born 1907) Text by Thomas Traherne
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Elizabeth Maconchy’s enchanting and lyrical short cycle of four perfectly contrasted songs is written with complete mastery and integration of style. Tone colours and placing of the voice are heard very keenly. The text is beautifully set to make the voice glow with bright resonance. The writing shows craftsmanship, control and delightful spontaneity.
A Penny for a Song (1981) Nicola LeFanu (born 1947)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Nicola LeFanu’s set of 10 miniatures shows great economy of style. The texts are taken from The Penguin Book of Irish Verse and The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse; the tenth poem is from All That’s Past by Walter de la Mare.
Who Wrote Ninot’s Chansons?
Authors: Litterick Louise
Published: November 2023

During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a number of new secular styles began to appear in chanson sources. One that came to prominence in the first years of the sixteenth century is generally referred to as the four-part popular arrangement, a designation that reflects the assumption that pieces in this style are built on pre-existent popular melodies and their associated texts. The texts appear to be free combinations of various borrowed elements. They evoke a pastoral context rather than a courtly one, and they tend to be irreverent, sexually nuanced, and playful.
The Orchestra in Germany
Authors: Spitzer John , Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

The orchestra was born in Germany into a political and social environment quite different from that of Italy or France. The German-speaking lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a patchwork of principalities: kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities, ecclesiastical states, and others-over 300 distinct political entities in all. Except for the free cities, each of these principalities was ruled by an individual sovereign-an emperor, king, prince, duke, or bishop-surrounded and assisted by family, nobility, bureaucrats, artisans, soldiers, and servants, organized into a court (Hof). A large court, like the Imperial court at Vienna in the mid-eighteenth century, could encompass as many as two thousand people; a middle-sized court, like Mannheim during the same period, numbered five hundred to a thousand; a small court a few hundred.
Placement, Seating, and Acoustics
Authors: Spitzer John , Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

Queen Christina of Sweden, having abdicated her throne and announced her conversion to Catholicism, was welcomed to Rome in 1655. Her arrival was celebrated at the carnival of 1656 with a spectacular Giostra delle caroselle outside the Barberini palace, as shown in Plate XII. In the center Don Matteo Barberini and two other Roman noblemen pose as Amazonian Indians in feathered headdresses. Parade floats carry mythological and allegorical figures: Hercules and a monster, a winged Cupid, the sun, and the four seasons.A contemporary account describes the music for this gala occasion: In the great courtyard of the palace ... were constructed two spacious grandstands capable of holding up to 3,000 persons.
Orchestral Performance Practices
Authors: Spitzer John , Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

Roger North, the English lawyer, parliamentarian, and musical amateur, in his manuscript notebooks written at the beginning of the eighteenth century, proposes a startling theory of instrumental ensemble: [With] violino’s set to play the same lesson, if perfectly in tune with one another, it is better music when one goes a little before or behind the other, than when they play (as they zealously affect) to a touch together. For in that, nothing is gott by the doubling, but a litle loudness; but in the other way, by the frequent dissonances there is a pleasant seasoning obtained. And let anyone say why a consort of severall parts, performed by diverse hands, makes a better harmony than when the same accords are heard out of one and the same instrument, unless it be allowed that the various movements by reason of different manners of handling, intersperseth some dissonances which makes a seasoning to the consort.
The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata
Authors: Tunley David
Published: November 2023

The first edition of this book is the classic study of one of the most popular musical forms in early eighteenth-century France, not only because it documents and examines its considerable repertoire for the first time, but also because it places the genre in the wider context of both French and Italian baroque music styles. In uniting the two national styles the cantata was one of the major influences in transforming the seventeenth-century French classical tradition in music into a style that owed much to the Italian baroque, yet retained a distinctive gallic expression. As well as its musical interest, the French cantata provides an arresting example of the influence of society upon music, and the book commences with a chapter that views the emergence of the form in its social setting. Cantata texts enjoyed a vogue as poetry and this literary aspect is also dealt with in a separate chapter. This new edition incorporates research by the author and other scholars over the twenty years since the first edition, reflecting today's growing interest in French baroque music. It also features a new chapter dealing with the French cantata in performance.
The Early Cantata Composers (ii) Bernier And Battistin
Authors: Tunley David
Published: November 2023

Like Charpentier, Nicolas Bernier (1665-1734) studied in Italy, and on Lhis return held positions at Chartres Cathedral, and in Paris at St. Germain-I’ Auxerrois and Ste. Chapelle.1 He belonged to a circle of musicians associated with the Duchess of Maine, whose celebrated Nuits de Sceaux provided a number of opportunities for music of a semi-dramatic nature, and for some years he was musical adviser to the Duke of Orleans who, it will be remembered, was also the employer of Morin. Since Bernier’s teacher, Caldara,2 left some fine cantatas, it is not surprising that his French pupil was prominent in the development of the form in his own country. One of the most prolific cantata composers in France, Bernier published forty works of this kind, all but one appearing in a collection of seven volumes, and such was their popularity that, according to D’ Aquin de Chateaulyon,3 they were still being eagerly bought thirty years after the appearance of the seventh volume in 1713.
The French Cantata in Performance
Authors: Tunley David
Published: November 2023

The aim of this chapter is to describe what French composers themselves have said about performing their cantatas-either on their scores or elsewhere-and where possible through the evidence of the music itself to find answers to questions that might be posed by today’s singers and instrumentalists interested in performing some of this repertoire. It is taken for granted that such performers already have a general knowledge of baroque performance-practice. Contemporary interpretation of baroque music has undergone subtle changes since the early years of the twentieth century, when Dolmetsch and others began their pioneering and seminal research into the performance practices of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Violin Making in England in the Age of Purcell
Authors: Dilworth John
Published: November 2023

Although there is much documentary evidence of the long history of the violin in England, there are very few actual surviving examples of violins made in this country during the lifetime of Henry Purcell and before such as would enable us to know precisely what form of instrument he knew and composed for. Throughout Europe, styles and techniques of violin making, which profoundly affect the sound of the instrument, were diverse, and it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that makers generally settled on one favoured pattern, that of the Tyrolean maker Jacob Stainer (born c.1617, died 1683). What few English violins of the seventeenth century we do have illustrate well this diversity of work, and give some evidence of the variety of contexts in which they were used. Most significantly, the short years of Purcell’s life, as both composer and keeper of the instruments in the Chapel Royal, mark a certain rise in the status of the violin-maker and his work, a rise which challenged the position of the viol-maker, an apparently discrete occupation in England during the seventeenth century but already an anachronism in Italy, which saw the most important developments in violin making.
Purcell Debauch’d: The Dramatick Operas in Performance
Authors: Burden Michael
Published: November 2023

With the exception of Dido and Aeneas, history has dealt unkindly with Purcell’s operas. Belonging to the short-lived genre of dramatick opera (or semi-opera, ambigue, multi-media spectacular, call them what you will which flourished in the early 1670s, and again in the 1690s and early 1700s, they are works with whose form the majority of later critics have failed to come to terms. The central issue is the question of-or lack of-integrated drama, an issue summed up succinctly by J. A. Fuller-Maitland in his note to the libretto of his 1898 edition of King Arthur. ‘The musical numbers are almost entirely incidental, that is, they seldom have anything to say to the main action of the play.’ Not only is Fuller-Maitland’s contention untruethe masques in The Fairy-Queen, for example, have everything to say about the action of the spoken dialogue-but his very language betrays a complete lack of understanding of the genre of the opera he was busily reorganizing. To refer to the score as consisting of ‘musical numbers’ suggests, rightly or wrongly, that Fuller-Maitland is treating the work as a ‘number opera’, which is, obviously, a totally different aesthetic concept; while to describe the spoken dialogue as ‘the play’, suggests with equal force that he sees the piece as incidental music to spoken drama, as opposed to spoken drama written or reorganized expressly for the purpose of dramatick opera.
Of Costume and Etiquette: Staging in the Time of Purcell
Authors: Eva Ronen Ruth
Published: November 2023

Although we have some idea of how Purcell’s operas sounded and how the music fitted into the plays for which it was written, we have little notion as to what the productions actually looked like, for there is a paucity of direct pictorial evidence. Further, we have lost much in the reading of the dramas, because we have little understanding of the etiquette of movement and gesture as they encode personal and social relationships of the time. The few illustrations we have of costumes for opera and ballet are at least one step away from the English Restoration. On the one hand, there are a large number of superb court masque designs by Inigo Jones, but these are works which predate the period. On the other hand, designs survive which are associated with contemporary opera productions staged not in England, but in France, although they were operas which influenced performances in London. However, both these groups of designs provide points of reference for the Restoration stage. In the discussion that follows I will examine the evidence that survives for both costume and etiquette, and will consider the possibilities these suggest.
L’arbore di Diana: a model for Così fan tutte
Authors: Link Dorothea
Published: November 2023

REPEATED attempts at finding a literary model for Cosìfan tutte have so far produced not a single source but several plausible ones, each of which lends a component to Da Ponte’s libretto. The wager theme, the Ovidian tale of Cephalus and Procris and the quartet of mismatched lovers have been traced to a number of other works.1
‘ ... new and altogether special and astonishingly difficult’: Some Comments on Junia’s Aria in Lucio Silla
Authors: Mahling Christoph-Hellmut
Published: November 2023

IN the Mozart literature there is virtually no indication that Wolfgang Amade, on his travels with his father before 1770, appeared not only as a violinist and pianist but also as a singer. While he apparently received systematic instruction in the piano and violin, there is no report, from his father or any other source, of any specific training in singing. In Nissen there is merely a mention that he had enjoyed singing as a child. The sole references to singing lessons come from the time of his stay in England, from April 1764 until July 1765, when he had instruction from the renowned and celebrated castrato Giovanni Manzuoli. Here the young Mozart would have become familiar not only with Italian singing technique, including the practice of ornamentation and the shaping of cadenzas, but also with the aesthetic attitudes governing the art of singing. Manzuoli would probably not have taken on a pupil who did not already have some singing skills; so it may be assumed that Leopold had his son instructed in the basic requirements of singing in the course of his general musical training.
‘II Compositore deluso’: the Fragments of Lo sposo deluso
Authors: Dell’Antonio Andrew
Published: November 2023

BETWEEN the composition of Die Entflihrung aus dem Serail and Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart started work on two comic operas that he never finished. The first of these, L’oca de! Cairo K.422, to a libretto by the Salzburg cleric and poet Gianbattista Varesco, can be dated with some certainty between August 1783 and the first months of 1784, on the basis of the extensive references to the opera in the correspondence Wolfgang exchanged with his father, Leopold, who was acting as intermediary between composer and librettist.
hier wird es besser seyn-ein blosses Recitativ zu machen ... ‘: Observations on Recitative Organization in Idomeneo
Authors: Rushton Julian
Published: November 2023

‘Here it will be better to have a mere recitative, well supported by the instruments.’1 In this justly celebrated letter to his father (rs November 1780) Mozart referred to the end of Act 2 of Idomeneo, where the monster has come from the sea to threaten Crete, amid ‘noise and confusion on the stage ... and a thunderstorm, which is not likely to subside during Herr Raaff’s aria, is it?’. In saying a ‘mere’ recitative Mozart was not of course aware of the his¬torical precedence of recitative over aria. Rather he must have assumed the precedence of measured music in opera of his own time, despite the example of the late operas of Gluck.
Percussion instruments
Authors: Campbell Murray , Greated Clive
Published: November 2023

The earliest records of musical activity show performers exploiting the range of sounds obtainable when different objects are struck or rattled together. The ensemble described by the Old Testament psalmist apparently includes two types of cymbal with distinctive musical properties, as well as some kind of drum; composers of the present day occasionally call for a percussion section containing more than fifty different instruments. Despite their musical importance, percussion instruments have received relatively little attention from acousticians; although the general principles which govern their behaviour are well understood, many questions of musical significance remain unresolved. In this chapter, we offer a brief review of the present state of knowledge concerning that section of the orchestra known affectionately as ‘the kitchen’. Most of the references to historical developments and playing techniques are drawn from the volume Percussion Instruments and their History, by one of the greatest of modern orchestral percussionists, James Blades (1984).