bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Lichfield
Authors: Spink Ian
Published: November 2023

Lichfield probably suffered more than any other English cathedral in the Civil War. The precincts were besieged three times, and on the third occasion, in 1646, the central spire was destroyed—-as was the organ. At the Restoration, the chapter house and vestry were the only parts that were still roofed.
Winchester
Authors: Spink Ian
Published: November 2023

The choir seems to have been quickly reassembled at Winchester Cathedral. Not only was an anthem sung at the proclamation of Charles as king on 12 May 1660, but by the end of the year it was up to strength, apart from four of the six minor canons. The 1638 statutes had laid down a choral establishment of six minor canons, ten lay clerks, and six choristers, with an organist who might also be master of the choristers unless it was felt that one of the minor canons or lay clerks would be more suitable.
Inspiration
Authors: Williamson John
Published: November 2023

In the aesthetic literature of the nineteenth century, the term ‘genius’ is something of a beacon. Mit dem Genius steht die Natur in ewigem Bunde, proclaimed Schiller in Kolumbus, and it was this poem that Pfitzner chose to set for unaccompanied chorus in 1905 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the poet’s death. Perhaps no one definition catches the full essence of what effectively was a talisman as much as a concept.
In the Footsteps of Wagner
Authors: Williamson John
Published: November 2023

PFITZNER’S problem as a music-dramatist was that he was a follower of Wagner who rejected Wagnerism. At first this may seem a puzzling statement in the light of several obvious parallels. Yet something like the shared admiration for Schopenhauer is put into perspective when a distinction is drawn between the erratic nature of Wagner’s encounter with the philosopher and Pfitzner’s much more systematic attempt to do him justice. The anti-Semitism common to both com posers may appear a more general bond. Yet comparison of their respective statements reveals little of Wagner’s apocalyptic tendencies in Pfitzner’s relentlessly abstract discussions of the subject.
The Earlier Rubato in Vocal Music
Authors: Hudson Richard
Published: November 2023

The idea of robbery was first applied by Tosi in 1723. He was a popular castrato singer, also a composer and teacher of singing, who lived at different times in various cities of Italy, Germany, and England. He admired most the singing of arias in what he called the ‘pathetic’ style, a style which was out of fashion by 1723 and which was cultivated probably thirty or forty years earlier—thus at the end of the seventeenth century. It was in the pathetic arias that he recommended the ‘stealing of time’.
Contemporaries of Chopin
Authors: Hudson Richard
Published: November 2023

A Number of composers with whom Chopin was acquainted were also involved with tempo rubato. The manner in which they used the device sheds some additional light, in some cases, on Chopin’s own practice. These composers include Kessler, whom Chopin knew in Warsaw; Filtsch, Mereaux, Pauline Viardot, Ernst, Franck, Gottschalk, Heller, and Liszt from his years in Paris; Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann, whom he visited in Leipzig in 1835.
Conclusion
Authors: Ehrlich Cyril
Published: November 2023

The Second World War was less disruptive to piano making than the first because there was less to disrupt. Some factories were destroyed in air raids, including Bliithner’s, and some firms were forced out of business by shortage of men and materials. But many small or weak makers had been eliminated during the depression, and further concentration through market forces or government decree merely continued an existing trend. In Britain, the most important difference was that the industry no longer depended upon foreign components, which again eased adjustment to wartime conditions. Production was diminished, of course, and standards tended to decline, which disturbed musicians but had little effect on a general public for whom pianos no longer occupied a central place in expenditure and aspiration.
Rock Culture in Liverpool
Authors: Cohen Sara
Published: November 2023

Rock bands have been an important part of Liverpool's culture and identity since the 1950s, and there are over 1,000 bands in the city. This book delineates and discusses rock culture in Liverpool as a way or style of life, highlighting its associated conventions, rituals, norms, and beliefs within the city's own unique social, economic, cultural, and political environment. It deals with the hitherto little explored music-making by `local', `amateur' rock bands, that are precariously poised between success and failure, caught between the urge of original creativity and the pressures of the record industry. Their struggle is discussed in detail within the context of their social and cultural lifestyle and the commercial environment within which they operate. Broad artistic and social issues are examined in great detail, through the biographies of a few specific bands, notably The Jactars and Crikey it's the Cromptons!
Introduction
Authors: Cohen Sara
Published: November 2023

Rock bands have been an important part of Liverpool’s culture and identity since the I 95os. It is impossible to determine the exact number of bands on Merseyside, but a survey conducted for the Liverpool Echo early in I980 discovered the existence of more than one thousand. When I first arrived in Liverpool in I 985 full of strategies on how to seek out bands and establish contacts in the music world, I found myself immersed in an overwhelmingly musical environment where many people seemed either to be in a band themselves or to know someone who was in a band, and where many of those not in bands spent much of their time talking of forming or joining one. I learnt about bands from taxi-drivers, hairdressers, waitresses and waiters; and in cafes and bars conversation on bands could be overheard.
Organization and Management of Bands
Authors: Cohen Sara
Published: November 2023

The following discussion concerns the organization and management of bands, indicating some of the activities, problems, and issues involved and highlighting several features of the local music ‘scene’ within which the bands operated.
The Violin Music of the Late Seventeenth Century
Authors: Boyden David D
Published: November 2023

The intensive experimentation that distinguished the early seventeenth century produced an idiomatic violin music and technique, and it bid the foundation on which these gains were consolidated and pushed to new heights by 1700. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century Germany enjoyed a hitherto unparalleled development of violin virtuosity, and Biber and Walther exploited the resources of the violin to such a point that Walther in particular could justly be called the Paganini of the seventeenth century. In Italy Corelli \Vas the first violin composer to attain lasting stature in the world of music, and in his works violin music reached a point of genuine maturity where musical and technical considerations were in perfect union.
The Technique of the Violin, 1650-1700 (I): National Styles of Playing. The Treatises. The Left Hand
Authors: Boyden David D
Published: November 2023

By the late seventeenth century, national styles of violin music emerged more and more clearly, and inevitably there appeared corresponding differences in instruments, bows, and playing technique. Two sharply contrasted ways of playing, the French dance style and the Italian sonata style, were the focal points and inspiration for followers and imitators in Germany, England, and the Low Countries. Between these sharply drawn prototypes there must have been a good many intermediate styles of playing, and, with certain local variants, dance style must have been very similar in all countries, crossing national lines.
The Technique of the Violin, 1650-1700 (II): the Right Hand and Related Questions The Sound of the Violin
Authors: Boyden David D
Published: November 2023

Tn his Traite de la viole, Rousseau observes that if the viol is the body of the instrument, the bow is its soul; and from this time violinists and other string players seem to be increasingly aware of the manifold possibilities of bowing for expression and variety.1 In the seventeenth century, as in the sixteenth, the most detailed descriptions of bowing occur in accounts of the viol. These descriptions often apply in principle to the violin and were doubtless adapted by violinists to their purposes.
The Technique of the Violin, 1700-61 (III): Bow Strokes and T½eir Execution
Authors: Boyden David D
Published: November 2023

Bowing indications, such as slurs and staccato marks, appear with increasing frequency in the early eighteenth century. When these marks are totally absent or very sparsely furnished it is not necessarily safe to assume that the score in question represents the composer’s intentions or that the music is then performed simply with individual bow strokes alternately down and up. As Leopold Mozart says (seep. 402 above), the bowing depends ‘on the good taste and sound judgement of the performer, if the composer has forgotten to mark the slurs, or has himself not understood how to do so’. (Italics added.) In such situations a knowledge of the Rule of DownBow and its numerous applications is very helpful as a guide to the insertion of bowings in various musical contexts. On the other hand, the bowings indicated by a composer should be set aside only after the most careful scrutiny and consideration. Bach’s bowings to the unaccompanied violin sonatas, generally disregarded by modern violinists as ‘impractical’, should be studied carefolly and adhered to as far as possible. To quote Leopold Ivfozart again: variations of bowings are ‘usually indicated by a sensible composer and must be observed exactly’.
The Technique of the Violin, 1700-61 ( IV): Multiple Stops. The ‘Bach’ Bow. Special Effects. Instrumentation and c onducting. 1½e Sound of the Violin
Authors: Boyden David D
Published: November 2023

Apolyphonic style of playing the violin was developed to a high point by the Germans at the end of the seventeenth century.1 In the early eighteenth century this style continued in Germany and it flourished in Italy and France as well. The Bach unaccompanied violin sonatas are the zenith of this genre, and even for the most gifted musicians these works present great musical and technical difficulties in performance. However, the problems attendant on playing the multiple stops in the Bach sonatas and elsewhere have been compounded, if not exaggerated, by a misunderstanding of the notation and the bow in use at the time.
Music for the Baroque Clarinet
Authors: Rice Albert R
Published: November 2023

Music with parts intended specifically for the baroque clarinet began to appear during the second decade of the eighteenth century. The majority of these parts exhibit a style of writing characterized by repeated notes, incomplete arpeggios, fanfare motifs, a limited range, and restricted use of the low register. In works composed after about 1730, other characteristics which take on a greater importance are a lyrical style of melodic writing, scale passages, leaps of an octave or more, and a more frequent use of the low register. The following discussion of manuscript and published music covers the period from about 1712 to 1756, when the baroque clarinet was played by soloists and orchestral musicians.
Elizabeth Maconchy
Authors: Tilmouth Michael , Kimbell David , Savage Roger
Published: November 2023

This Suite, written in 1928-9, is inspired by Miss Victoria Sackville-West’s poem of the same title which won the Hawthornden Prize a few years ago.1 The Suite made a great impression on its first production at the Queen’s Hall in London on 30 August 1930; and there is no reason why it should produce less impression wherever it is fairly adequately produced. The composer is young enough for the years that have passed since its first performance to have enlarged her range already in more ways than may be obvious; but in this Suite it is already obvious that she has the habit of building on solid foundations, and that she accurately imagines the sound of what she writes.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Authors: Tilmouth Michael , Kimbell David , Savage Roger
Published: November 2023

Of all Mozart’s mature symphonies that in B flat is the least known. It was finished on 9 July 1779, in Salzburg, and was the first of three which he proposed to dedicate to the Prince von Furstenberg. Nothing is easier than to classify Mozart’s works according to periods. The only trouble is that the possibilities are endless. The authors of the numerous forgeries which the early nineteenth century foisted upon Mozart were as uniform in the correct elements of their style as the greatest masters of Wardour Street [imitation-antique] English, but far surpassed that language in its range of incorrectness.
Looking and Listening
Authors: Maconie Robin
Published: November 2023

What is the difference between listening to music and listening to the sounds of everyday life? No postcards please. ‘Music gives pleasure’—but then, so can the sounds of everyday life. ‘Music is more organized’—but organized sounds, many of them more complexly organized than any composed music, are regularly encountered in everyday life, if we only knew how to recognize them. ‘Musical sounds are beautiful’—ditto. ‘Music is heard in concert-halls, in recordings, and so on’—but this is packaging which should not be necessary if the distinction were real.
Mozart and his Personal Circle
Authors: Steptoe Andrew
Published: November 2023

Although Mozart’s childhood was exceptional in so many ways, he was raised in an atmosphere of faith in God and trust in hard work typical of the mid-eighteenth century urban classes. Leopold Mozart was a firm Catholic, but his creed was tinged with Calvinist restraint. He was not, for example, above castigating the excesses of Italian worship:

You must not expect me to give you a description of the church services here. I am far too irritated to do so. They merely consist of music and of church adornment. Apart from these the most disgusting licentiousness prevails.
Cosìfan tutte and Contemporary Morality
Authors: Steptoe Andrew
Published: November 2023

The sources for the text of Cosìfan tutte are mysterious. The ingenious, symmetrical plot derives from themes with a long history in European literature; nevertheless, the opera bears a marked contemporary gloss. Features such as the Moorish disguises and the Mesmeric episode in the Finale of Act I indicate that Da Ponte was writing in full knowledge of the most recent theatrical fashions. Yet even the basic question of whether Da Ponte followed his usual practice of adapting an earlier play, or produced an original libretto, remains unresolved.
Drama and Musical Form in Le nozze di Figaro
Authors: Steptoe Andrew
Published: November 2023

The integration of musical style with dramatic meaning in Mozart’s opera buffa is based on the concept of ‘form’. The fundamental element underlying form in the classical style is tonality, since the tension and dynamism of the music derives in large part from harmonic contrasts. An outline of tonal or key structures in Mozart’s music is therefore a necessary preliminary, although this treatment is far from exhaustive. Perhaps the most illuminating recent descriptions of Mozart’s style are to be found in Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style (1971) and Sonata Forms (1980), and the present summary is heavily indebted to these works.
Don Giovanni: Musical Form and Dramatic Cohesion
Authors: Steptoe Andrew
Published: November 2023

Don Giovanni has a less satisfying dramatic structure than Le nozze di Figaro. It lacks the poise of the earlier work, and Act II possesses a looseness of form that can lead to disturbing longeurs in an uninspired performance. Yet these imperfections are more than compensated for by a musical and emotional thrust of overwhelming energy. The dynamic cohesion of the score raises the composer's art to more electrifying peaks (if not to a higher plane) than Le nozze di Figaro.
The Instrument and its History
Authors: Barclay Robert
Published: November 2023

Before examining the development and progress of the metal industry in Nurem berg it would be advisable first to describe the typical musical instrument which the trumpet-makers produced in huge quantities for nearly four hundred years. The classic trumpet is one of the simplest and most uncomplicated instruments in European music. It consists solely of a length of tubing (usually brass) which is folded upon itself once, runs parallel for three-quarters of its length, and then flares out wards into a bell for the remainder. The tubing is about IO or 12 mm. in diameter and about 2 m. long. As a general rule, the bell expands to ten times the diameter of the tubing. It is a natural instrument, having no slides, no tone holes, and no valves or keys. It requires no tuning or voicing during manufacture, apart from minor adjustments to its length. It is capable of sounding only the notes of the natural harmonic series, except under special circumstances.
The Metal
Authors: Barclay Robert
Published: November 2023

Modern brass is an alloy of copper and zinc in which the proportion of zinc is generally not less than 5 per cent and not greater than 50 per cent. The wide range of alloys falling within these limits are known collectively today as the brasses. They were not always so well defined. It is curious that 11:his material, which was so favoured by musical instrument-makers and other craftsmen, was, from antiquity until well into the eighteenth century, one of the least understood. The various names under which alloys of copper and zinc have been known show the widespread misunderstanding of its true nature.
Solders and Fluxes
Authors: Barclay Robert
Published: November 2023

The technique of joining metals with solder has its origins in prehistory. Archaeo logical objects of gold, silver, and bronze with intricacy joined components indicate the early origins of the technique and the fine control possible. Soldering is based upon the ability of different metals to dissolve into each other by surface alloying. It is possible to heat one metal to its melting point and cause it to flow and dissolve into the surface of another metal which is still in the solid phase. Solders are often binary or ternary alloys; they are composed of two or three metals because alloying gives to the resultant material a number of useful properties.
The Early History of the ospedali
Authors: Baldauf-Berdes Jane L
Published: November 2023

The birthplace of the Italian church idiom was in the Venetian and Neapolitan conservatoire, where its most influential composers had worked or learned. The music at these institutions was without doubt a force for good. Without the funds by which the audiences (no other word will do) in their chapels expressed their enjoyment, bastards would have starved, the indigent sick would have died untended, young ladies without means would have lacked the dowry which brought them husbands.
Swan Lake in Moscow
Authors: Wiley Roland John
Published: November 2023

AT the end of 1865 Tchaikovsky graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatory. But soon he moved to Moscow, having accepted a teaching position in Russia’s second conservatory, which had recently opened there. He had never lived in the old capital.Moscow’s population in the 1860s comprised those who cherished what remained of the city’s ties to the patriarchal traditions of ancient Russia, and a chic, fashionable element, West-oriented, who relished the new freedoms of the post-Nicholaevan era.
The Music of Swan Lake
Authors: Wiley Roland John
Published: November 2023

IF there is any advantage to knowing so little about the performance version of Swan Lakeas it was produced in Moscow, it is that we are forced to consider Tchaikovsky’s score undisturbed by Reisinger’s changes, to reacquaint ourselves with its beauties, and to reflect on the composer’s accomplishment in the history of ballet.
The Music of Sleeping Beauty
Authors: Wiley Roland John
Published: November 2023

Sleeping Beauty, like Swan Lake, is a work full of delights and revelations. To identify them, especially the subtler aspects of the music’s structure, we must once again analyse the score, as Tchaikovsky was no more informative about the conception of his second ballet than of his first. The results of this analysis, however, will be quite different from the first because the ballets are so different. There are differences in dramatic shape and movement, and we have the added consideration of Petipa’s instructions to Tchaikovsky.
Un Giorno Di Regno
Authors: Budden Julian
Published: November 2023

Then follows the curious mis-statement that his wife Margherita and two children died within three months of each other during the summer of 1840. In fact the first child died in 1838 when Verdi was still at Busseto; the second during the rehearsals of Oberto the following year. However, an entry in the diary of Antonio Barezzi for June 1840 attests: ‘In Milan at midday on the feast of Corpus Christi my beloved daughter Margherita died in my arms of some terrible disease perhaps unknown to medical science; she was in the flower of her years and at the height of her good fortune, for she had become the lifelong companion of that excellent young man Giuseppe Verdi, maestro di musica.’t Verdi returned to Busseto with his father-in-law.
I Due Foscari
Authors: Budden Julian
Published: November 2023

‘Everything about Venice is extraordinary—her aspect is like a dream, and her history is a romance.’ So wrote Byron in the preface to the first and better of his two Venetian plays, Marino Faliero. But it was not the gay, sensual Venice, the carnival city of Hoffmann and Schumann, that caught his imagination, but the secret, mysterious Venice of Hugo’s Angelo. It was the Venice of hidden cruelties, the seat of a vast maritime empire and the most repressive oligarchy in modern Europe, a city whose secrets arc as deep as the ocean which symbolically she weds each year. He could identify this oligarchy with the English aristocratic society which, in a sense, had cast him out. Both his heroes-Faliero and Jacopo Foscariare men who have set themselves against their peers. Of the two, Faliero conforms more strictly to the Aristotelian definition of a tragic hero; he is therefore a more interesting figure, and Marino Falicro a better play.
Rigoletto
Authors: Budden Julian
Published: November 2023

Verdi’s contract to produce a new opera for the Teatro la Fenice in Venice was signed in April 1850;* librettist Piave, production date carnival-quaresima 1851, subject as yet unchosen but Dumas’s Kean high on the list of possibilities.t In fact Verdi and Piave had not yet even agreed on the opera for Ricordi due to be ready by the autumn. Then towards the end of the month, while he was still waiting to know more about the plot of Stiffelio, Verdi wrote to Piave with a new idea, broaching it with an almost furtive caution which shows that he was well aware of the risks involved.
Il Trov a Tore
Authors: Budden Julian
Published: November 2023

The triumph of Rigoletto in March 1851 left Verdi understandably jubilant. He had accomplished what had seemed like a revolution in Italian opera and he had carried his public with him. At thirty-eight his creative energy was at its peak; and the man who had found the strain of composing two operas a year well-nigh intolerable was now proposing to the impresario at Bologna to compose a new opera for the coming autumn, ‘the libretto to be my responsibility and, I hope, by Cammarano!’* While still in Venice he had already written to the Neapolitan poet proposing El Trovador by Garcia Gutierrez, foremost among the Spanish romantic playwrights who followed in the wake of Victor Hugo. Produced in Madrid in August 1836 with a success that no other Spanish author had equalled and which Gutierrez himself would never repeat, it is a high-flown, sprawling melodrama flamboyantly defiant of the Aristotelian unities, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident.
Otello
Authors: Budden Julian
Published: November 2023

‘As for your dolce far niente after all you’ve done - if it were really the case I might envy you; but I don’t take you literally, and even ifI attach no weight to the rumours that you’re at work on a new score (some say Nero, others Julius Caesar, others something else again) I hope that you have not terminated your career and that your genius will manifest itself with new creations.’*
Italian Vocal Music
Authors: Harrán Don
Published: November 2023

With but few exceptions, Rossi’s Italian vocal works were published in eight collections, forming, in their bar count, nearly 50 per cent of his repertory. There are three different ways to gauge size: number of collections, number of works, and number of bars. In all three areas, the secular collections stand in the forefront. Of the three, the peculiarities of the last have yet to be considered.
Instrumental Music
Authors: Harrán Don
Published: November 2023

Of Rossi’s four instrumental collections, the first two came out almost together (1607—8) while the third was separated by a break of nine years from the fourth (1613, 1622). All four were intended for string instruments, with the exception of the first, which offers the option of playing the upper parts on cornetts.

Books 1—2 contain some of the earliest works to be published as instrumental chamber music, or according to Agazzari’s designation, ‘dolci conserti’ (to be contrasted with his other category, the ‘conserti strepitosi e grandi’). A tradition of instrumental music seems to have become established in Mantua by the time of Rossi’s first books. Indeed, a ducal collection of instruments is known from the 1550s, if not earlier. Yet there were no instrumental music publications of Mantuan composers until Rossi’s, which, in their many sinfonie, might have been stimulated by the theatrical activities for the nuptials of the crown prince Francesco.
Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony
Authors: Frogley Alain
Published: November 2023

Ever since its première just before the composer’s death, Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony has divided critical opinion and remained something of an enigma. Yet the composer thought highly of the work, and went against his usual practice by preserving all the sketches. This study, the first of its kind on a work of Vaughan Williams, analyses the symphony and traces its genesis through hundreds of pages of sketches and drafts; it also offers a general introduction to the composer’s working methods. The manuscripts show how the composer worked meticulously to create the complex expressive ambivalence of the finished work, transforming in the process simpler conceptions redolent of his earlier music. Most crucially, however, the sketches reveal an underlying programme, centred on the theme of innocent sacrifice and drawing on Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Stonehenge, and Salisbury Cathedral. Vaughan Williams’s new musical path in the symphony, it emerges, was closely allied to the continuing evolution of his visionary agnosticism.
The Ninth Symphony: Context, Sources, and Working Methods
Authors: Frogley Alain
Published: November 2023

The Ninth Symphony was first performed on 2 April 1958, and was Vaughan Williams’s last completed major work before his death in August of that year. It was written by a man advanced in years-the composer was 8 5 by the time of its completion-but not withdrawn into retreat or isolation. Vaughan Williams enjoyed an extraordinary ‘Indian summer’ after his second marriage in 1953: he moved back to London after many years in Darking and led a busy and productive life, attending performances (often of new music), championing various causes, establishing the Vaughan Williams Trust, and continuing to write an impressive amount of music.1 In some ways, however, it was inevitably a period of looking back. Favourite places and books were revisited, and a nostalgic and retrospective tone sometimes emerges in the music written at this time, including the Ninth Symphony. The composer revised a number of his earlier symphonies, and incorporated in some new works themes from unpublished early pieces, whose manuscripts may have surfaced during the move from Dorking. Yet despite these backward glances, and despite Vaughan Williams’s advanced age, there is no preoccu pation with death in the late works. We shall see that it does play a central role in the programme of the Ninth Symphony; only towards the very end, however, might one interpret the focus as primarily autobiographical.
From the Later Georgian to the Mid-Victorian Age
Authors: Caldwell John
Published: November 2023

Whereas the previous period could be said to have witnessed a drastic lowering of the average composer’s aspirations, the present age (1815–70) saw the rise of a new seriousness—a development paralleled by changes in the general political and ecclesiastical outlook of the nation. Whether the artistic results of this phase of consciousness bore any qualitative relation to it would be a matter of opinion; a firm moral purpose is no guarantee of musical or any other form of artistic inspiration. But it was inevitable that English composers should respond somehow or other to the Romantic movement, with its political and moral overtones—both to the impact of English (and indeed German) Romantic literature and to that of early musical Romanticism on the Continent. The widening of access to European opera—by Weber, Spontini, Bellini, Meyerbeer, to name no others—to the instrumental music and songs of Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Chopin, and to the new Continental oratorio tradition of Spohr and Mendelssohn, was bound to have its effect, beneficial or not.
Notation
Authors: Hiley David
Published: November 2023

In this chapter first the notational signs used in the earliest chant sources are discussed, the signs generally known as neumes. It is not easy to come to grips with the different styles of notation, their beginnings and historical development, without some basic knowledge of the system or systems involved. First of all, therefore, a brief description of the signs in one particular manuscript is given, a manuscript chosen (a) because it is available for further study in facsimile in a modern transcription, and (b) because it has a letter notation.
Persons and Places
Authors: Hiley David
Published: November 2023

This chapter will inevitably seem incomplete to those seeking a full and balance<1 account of the history of plainchant in all the various churches of Western Europe during the Middle Ages. At present, however, it is not possible to write such an account, for investigation of the various chant traditions has so far proceeded very unevenly, and full coverage would in any case exceed the proper limits of this book. I have therefore ventured a few remarks only on those persons and places, those musicians, churchmen, and churches, that have attracted particular attention so far, or that I myself have found particularly interesting. The purpose of the chapter is partly to point readers in the direction of information they may be seeking, but partly also to give an idea of the sort of research which has been carried out, its aims and methods.
Reformations of Gregorian Chant
Authors: Hiley David
Published: November 2023

The Roman-Franciscan chant repertory does not mark a radically new beginning in the history of Western chant, except in so far as it meant the end of Old Roman chant in the Eternal City itself. Whatever musical reforms it may have involved, they embody a concept of Gregorian chant not in any substantial way different from that found in most churches in most lands. The Cistercian order of monks, however, revised its chant repertory according to fixed principles which entailed quite drastic alterations in the melodies they had inherited. Therefore their chant comes first in this chapter on reforms of the chant repertory.
Africa
Authors: Merwe Peter Van Der
Published: November 2023

The African influence on the music of the United States, though profound, is extraordinarily hard to pin down to individual cultures. The half-million-odd African slaves arrived over a period of more than two centuries, beginning in 1619 and ending some time during the mid nineteenth century. They came from a vast area, stretching from the westernmost tip of Africa to southern Angola, and reaching deep into the continent; there were also some from the south-east. Once on American soil, tribal groupings were often broken up for fear of insurrection, and in any case the internal slave trade eventually scattered the tribes far and wide. If African music were homogeneous this would not matter, but it is not. It consists of a mosaic of distinct traditions, including some which are far from the conventional African stereotype.
The Blacks
Authors: Merwe Peter Van Der
Published: November 2023

When the first black slave set foot on North America the late Renaissance was still in full swing. King James I was on the throne of England and Scotland, and Shakespeare, had he been alive, would have been fifty-five. The last of the slaves arrived, more than two centuries later, during the smoke and grime of the Industrial Revolution. The beginning of this long forced migration was a mere trickle, coming not directly from Africa but from the West Indies, and there is controversy over whether they were officially slaves or indentured servants like the whites. Whatever their status, it seems that not much distinction was made between them and their white counterparts at first. At all events, the records show plenty of evidence of friendly relations between menials of either race.
The Beat
Authors: Merwe Peter Van Der
Published: November 2023

Western musical notation forces on us a view of rhythm which is predominantly mathematical. It tells us the ratios between the note lengths, and, if the music is of the conventional, measured type, it gives some idea of a recurring pattern. Beats are something imposed on this pattern. There is a beat, presumably, at the beginning of the bar, and possibly elsewhere-we aren’t too sure. Does a piece in brisk{ time have three beats to the bar or only one? We are a little vague on this point, possibly because the composer wants us to be a little vague.
Peter Warlock
Authors: Smith Barry
Published: November 2023

Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic of twentieth-century British composers. He was by turns a sensitive songwriter of remarkable genius, a witty and caustic critic, a rare scholar of early music, and a friend of some of the leading figures of the day - including William Walton, Jacob Epstein, and D. H. Lawrence. This is a complete account of this mercurial musician. Barry Smith uses new and often controversial material in telling his real, and frequently outrageous story. Here is the man, the composer, writer, and scholar, from his dangerous involvement in the occult to his long-lasting loves and hates - all of which ended by his own hand in a gas-filled London flat on a cold winter's morning in 1930.
Friendship with Lawrence(1915-1916)
Authors: Smith Barry
Published: November 2023

Whilst still at oxford, Philip had been introduced by Robert Nichols to D. H. Lawrence’s first three novels, The White Peacock, The Trespasser, and Sons and Lovers. The intensity and quality of Lawrence’s Love Poems and Others, published in 1913, had so impressed him that he wrote to Viva Smith saying that he was sending her ‘some of the most wonderful love poems in the world’.1 He also sent a copy of these poems to Delius, adding that he considered Lawrence’s novels unrivalled both in depth of insight and beauty of language. Writing to Viva about Sons and Lovers he used words such as ‘superb’, ‘amazing’, ‘a real masterpiece ... The style is most uncannily sure: every word rings true, every adjective, every phrase is so startlingly apt and precise. I hope to meet Lawrence soon, as I have discovered people who know him. No meeting could afford me greater pleasure or interest.’
Return to Wales(1921-1924)
Authors: Smith Barry
Published: November 2023

In the autumn of 1921, after the Sackbut debacle, an impecunious Philip moved back to Cefn Bryntalch. Apart from the occasional trip to London, often to negotiate with publishers, he would live there almost continuously for the next three years. During this time he applied himself to a large number of different projects, telling Taylor that the only way to escape intolerable boredom was to work from morning till night.
Diverse Disc Formats
Authors: Pohlmann Ken C
Published: November 2023

The versatility of the compact disc has quickly become apparent to manufacturers and users alike. Since music is an extremely storage-hungry phenomenon, the CD must have a tremendous storage capacity. To take further advantage of that capacity, other CD formats have been devised. CD-ROM was developed, incorporating nonaudio data, such as data base and software data. CD-I and DVI are specific applications of CD-ROM. Their data storage opportunities include audio-visual information stored in a user-interactive manner. CD-V merges the compact disc audio format with the Laservision video format. CD-R is a write-once format allowing users to store their own data. In addition, recordable/erasable CD formats have been developed as well as incompatible formats such as the Mini Disc. CD + G/M features storage for graphics and other nonmusical data. A smaller diameter compact disc, the CD-3 is used for applications requiring shorter playing time.
Henry Purcell
Authors: Holman Peter
Published: November 2023

In recent years Purcell's biography has received a good deal of attention, but there has been little writing on his music; indeed, this book provides the first general survey since Sir Jack Westrup's 1937 volume in the Master Musicians series. Furthermore, it is the first book to explore in detail the historical context of Purcell's music, dealing fully with the institutions he worked for, the origin and development of the various genres to which he contributed, and the sources of his music. In the process, a new picture of Purcell's creative personality emerges: a composer obsessed with formal counterpoint, extraordinarily well-versed in English music of the previous century, yet eager to embrace up-to-date features of the Italian style in the 1680s.
Instrumental Music
Authors: Holman Peter
Published: November 2023

PURCELL was heir to rich and distinctive traditions of instrumental music that went back to Tudor times. Around 1600 the con sort repertory consisted mainly of fantasias in three, four, five, and six parts, intended for various combinations of treble, tenor, and bass viols, though it also included the graver sort of dance music, and motets and madrigals were often played in instrumental versions. Around 1620 a group of court composers under the patronage of Prince Charles began to experiment with new types of consort music, combining the chamber organ and the violin with viols for the first time.
The Piano Music
Authors: Stevens Halsey
Published: November 2023

Like most of his early work, the piano music written during Bartók’s student years was later repudiated by the composer, and the only music of the period which is now accessible is that which had the fortune, good or bad, to be published soon after its composition. There is little reason to suppose that these works, which include the Four Piano Pieces (1903) and the piano transcription of the Marcia funebre from the Kossuth symphony, are superior to the other compositions of the period or that Bartók valued them more highly. Having been perpetuated in print, they were out of his hands and he could not conveniently withdraw them as he did the scores that remained in manuscript.
The Vocal Music
Authors: Stevens Halsey
Published: November 2023

In Contrast to his compatriot Zoltán Kodály, Bartók was essentially an instrumental composer, and his comparatively meager list of vocal compositions, though produced throughout his career, is of slighter significance than his work in other fields. Aside from the opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, which must be considered a dramatic rather than a vocal work, there are several published groups of original songs, the Cantata profane for double chorus, tenor and baritone soli, and orchestra, and a number of small choral works based upon or inspired by Hungarian folksong. All the rest, whether for solo voice and piano or for chorus, are folksong transcriptions.
Studio acoustics
Authors: Burd Alex
Published: November 2023

The aim of sound recording practice as described throughout this book is to enable the practitioners of the commonly used techniques to create a more or less permanent record of sound—which may or may not exist as an entity.

If the studio is the first link in the chain, which of course it will not be in the case of location recording, then the environment must assist the performers or the engineers (or both) to create the desired final product. While location recording can provide an environment which is unrivalled in the stimulation it brings to the performer, few locations these days can provide the quiet uninterrupted conditions which are necessary for economic recording. This chapter aims to describe the principles of acoustic design, together with the audible consequences of the design decisions that are taken. Various classes of studio, control room, and other technical rooms may need to be created to satisfy the manifold demands of clients. No one type of room can be expected to be suitable for all programme material, but certain fundamental considerations remain constant for all types.
Tape duplicating
Authors: Nathan (Revised by John Borwick) Gerd
Published: November 2023

The successful emergence of the analogue compact cassette as a high fidelity consumer product was largely due to an early recognition of its technical limits, and to a concerted effort by raw-material suppliers and software manufacturers to minimize the effects of these limits as far as possible. Over the last fifteen years we have witnessed a dramatic improvement in the quality of domestic cassette players, cassette tapes, and cassette housings. Cassette players now have better tape transports, resulting in better track alignment and azimuth during playback; cassette tapes have become more tolerant to high-level high frequencies and are less hissy; last not but least, cassette housings are moulded to closer tolerances with consequential improved tape guidance during playback. These are just some of the factors which have placed the analogue cassette ‘on the map’ as a hi-fl. format.
Orchestral Music
Authors: Musgrave Michael
Published: November 2023

In the clear patterns of relationship which exist within the chamber and orchestral works of the third period, no two works stand as close in time and character as the Second Symphony and the Violin Concerto, produced within a year in 1877 and 1878 respectively. In the common moods of their first movements, symbolised by shared key, metre, triadic shape of opening themes and orchestral colour-warm lyricism coexisting with a rhetorical manner which results in identical rhythmic figures at one point - (compare bars 118 and 78 of the respective movements) they complement each other as different expressions of this aspect of Brahms’s mature language. Yet they occupy rather different positions in his output. Unlike the Second, and to an even greater extent than the First Symphony, the Violin Concerto stands in a distinct tradition: that of the violin concerto as exemplified by Beethoven.
Scherzos
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

Preceding pages have shown how a multiplicity of theories, many of them contradictory and competing, have been brought to bear upon the preludes. It would probably be inappropriate for a general study of Chopin’s music to approach its subject from any one theoretical perspective, and in any case the present author has little inclination to do so. Musical language is an integrated whole and it seems unlikely that any single analytical method can convey this and explain it completely, though the promise of a compre hensive model remains subtly seductive. No less seductive is the idea that different approaches might in some way be combined to form a single global view of a work.
Fantasies
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

Chopin wrote four works incorporating the title ‘Fantasy’. There seems little significance attaching to the choice of the term for either the youthful Fantasy on Polish Themes Op.13 (really a pot-pourri) or the Fantasy-impromptu Op.66, where the description ‘Fantasy’ was in all probability not Chopin’s at all. But in the two later works, the Fantasy in F minor Op.49 and the Polonaise-fantasy Op.61, he comes closer to some of the more central associations of an admittedly fairly loosely applied genre title. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries at least, the term ‘Fantasy’ was frequently used for works which had something of the character of a composed-out improvisation.
Traditions in the Repertory of the Papal Choir in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Authors: Brauner Mitchell p.
Published: November 2023

To define the traditions in the papal choir’s repertory between the pap acies of Sixtus IV and Sixtus V, one cannot simply discuss those works that were established in that repertory over a period of time. That would be a discussion of a canon of works. Rather, one should put a slightly different slant on the notion of canon and discuss not only particular pieces in the repertory but also the types of pieces to which were attached ceremony, lore, and symbolism - in other words, tradition.
The Birth of the Orchestra
Authors: Spitzer John , Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

This book traces the emergence of the orchestra from 16th-century string bands to the ‘classical’ orchestra of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and their contemporaries. Ensembles of bowed stringed instruments, several players per part plus continuo and wind instruments, were organized in France in the mid-17th century and then in Rome at the end of the century. The prestige of these ensembles and of the music and performing styles of their leaders, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Arcangelo Corelli, caused them to be imitated elsewhere, until by the late 18th century, the orchestra had become a pan-European phenomenon. Spitzer and Zaslaw review previous accounts of these developments, then proceed to a thoroughgoing documentation and discussion of orchestral organization, instrumentation, and social roles in France, Italy, Germany, England, and the American colonies. They also examine the emergence of orchestra musicians, idiomatic music for orchestras, orchestral performance practices, and the awareness of the orchestra as a central institution in European life.
Introduction
Authors: Spitzer John , Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

The story of Orpheus has provided the subject for operas, ballets, tone poems, and other musical works, beginning with Poliziano’s rfeo, produced in Mantua in 1480, and continuing to the present. Plucking a lyre in time to his words, says Ovid in his classic formulation of the myth, Orpheus makes the pale shades weep; the thirst of Tantalus is momentarily appeased, Sisyphus sits down on his stone to listen, and the Furies’ cheeks are moist with tears. Poliziano’s Orpheus accompanied himself on a lute or perhaps a bowed lira di braccio. In later musical versions the lyre of Orpheus was represented by a variety of different musical instruments.
The Classical Orchestra
Authors: Spitzer John , Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

Which was the best orchestra in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century? Every critic, commentator, and musical tourist seemed to have an opinion. “The first orchestra in Europe, for the number and intelligence of symphonists,” says Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1754, “is that of Naples; but the best distributed ... is the orchestra at the opera house of the King of Poland, at Dresden.” Not so, says Louis Petit de Bachaumont, publicist and chronicler, in 1773: “as far as the instruments are concerned,” everyone agrees that the Concert Spirituel in Paris “is at present the best regulated concert in all of Europe.