bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Dissociation of iridium(III) phosphorescent emitters upon adsorption on Cu(110) revealed by scanning tunneling microscopy
Authors: Gersen H. , Schaub R. , Xu W. , Stensgaard I. , Laegsgaard E. , Linderoth T. R. , Besenbacher F. , Nazeeruddin Md. K. , Graetzel M.
Published: January 2007

The phosphorescent emitters used in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) play a crucial role for tuning the color and the luminescence intensity. The authors have investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy the adsorption of iridium(III) phosphorescent emitter molecules used in OLEDs on a partly oxidized Cu(110) surface. Surprisingly they find that 50% of the emitters have dissociated upon adsorption at the substrate. The findings suggest that the decrease in the lifetime of OLEDs, which are manufactured by vacuum vaporization technique, is due to the dissociation of emitter molecules present in the device.
Xenon ion beam characterization in a helicon double layer thruster
Authors: Charles C. , Boswell R. W. , Lieberman M. A.
Published: January 2007

A current-free electric double layer is created in a helicon double layer thruster operating with xenon and compared to a recently developed theory. The Xe+ ion beam formed by acceleration through the potential drop of the double layer is characterized radially using an electrostatic ion energy analyzer. For operating conditions of 500W rf power, 0.07mTorr gas pressure, and a maximum magnetic field of 125G, the measured beam velocity is about 6kms−1, the beam area is about 150cm2, and the measured beam divergence is less than 6°.
Intrinsic crystalline-to-amorphous transition above 400°C in plasma-deposited Si thin films
Authors: Kamei Toshihiro
Published: January 2007

There has been long debate concerning why microcrystalline Si formation is disrupted at a deposition temperature above around 400°C: is it due to the loss of surface hydrogen coverage or to the incorporation of oxygen impurities? The authors reduced the atmospheric concentration of such impurities as O, C, and N in this work by using an ultraclean plasma deposition apparatus and demonstrate that microcrystalline Si films showed improved crystallinity at a deposition temperature of 350°C, resulting in a mobility of 5. As the deposition temperature was raised to 450°C, however, the Raman spectrum shows an amorphous structure of the film under such clean conditions. According to secondary ion mass spectrometry, the O, C, and N concentrations in this film were as low as 1017, 1016, and 1017cm−3, respectively, demonstrating that the crystalline-to-amorphous transition around 400°C should be intrinsic under the present conditions and may be correlated with thermal hydrogen desorption on a film-growing surface.
Thomas Attwood's Lessons in Composition with Mozart
Authors: Heartz Daniel
Published: January 2007

The Attwood papers recently entered the public domain, having been acquired by the British Library. This is fitting, for they constitute a kind of national monument—a vital force that has made itself felt upon English musical thought and training for nearly two centuries. Ever since Attwood brought them back from his period of study with Mozart in Vienna in 1785–7 they have been used repeatedly for teaching purposes, and handed on with reverence from master to disciple (thus escaping total destruction, the usual fate of such documents). Upon Attwood's death in 1838 the papers passed to his pupil John Goss, who had already published the Minuet in C major, perhaps the best known of Attwood's pieces rewritten by Mozart, in his Introduction to Harmony and Thorough Bass (1833).
The Young Verdi and Shakespeare
Authors: Kimbell David R. B.
Published: January 2007

One of Shakespeare's most eloquent eighteenth-century apologists was an Italian: Dr. Johnson's good friend Giuseppe Baretti, who had acquired the taste during his residence in London in the 1750s. When Johnson's Shakespeare edition appeared, Baretti, now back in Italy again, wrote to request a copy: he wished, he explained, ‘to expound the great tragedian to the ladies of Italy’. Baretti was as good as his word, writing in the literary magazine Frusta in January 1764 of this poet who ‘in both the tragic and the comic style stands quite alone, ahead of all the Corneilles, all the Racines, and all the Molières of Gaul’. And it was Baretti who took up arms against Voltaire, whose prestige as a Shakespeare critic had been hitherto unquestioned in France and Italy, publishing in 1777 his Discours sur Shakespeare el sur Monsieur de Voltaire.
North Italian Falsobordone and its Relevance to the early Stile Recitativo
Authors: Bettley John
Published: January 2007

In 1585 a set of Vesper psalms for four voices by Paolo Isnardi, a choirmaster at the cathedral and court of Ferrara, was brought out by the printer Giacomo Vincenzi. In the dedication to the abbot of Santa Maria della Charità in Venice, Vincenzi states that the psalms are composed ‘con nova maniera di consonanza, over come dicono falsobordone’ (‘in a new style of consonance, or, as it is called, falsobordone’). Falsibordoni had been published before, for in Isnardi's Vesper psalms for five voices, printed in 1579, wordless falsibordoni in all eight tones were appended at the end of the partbooks, obviously designed as easier alternatives to the conventional contrapuntal settings; but with the 1585 volume, a publication, for the first time, was devoted exclusively to examples of the style, with specific verbal underlay for each voice (ex. 1). The dedication to the abbot probably indicates an intended market of non-professional choirs made up of resident clerics or musically less-proficient monks and juvenile novices, who preferred some variation to the unison plainsong recitation of the Office: it is significant that the falsibordoni are scored for four voices, as opposed to the ubiquitous five-voiced psalm settings of the late Renaissance.
The Early History of the Viol
Authors: Woodfield Ian
Published: January 2007

The first important centre of viol making and viol playing in the late fifteenth century was the Mediterranean city of Valencia, capital of the southernmost province of the Kingdom of Aragon. From Valencia the viol quickly spread to nearby parts of the Aragonese kingdom such as the Maestrazgo region, the provinces of Aragon and Catalonia, and the islands of Majorca and Sardinia. Late fifteenth-century paintings of the Madonna and Child serenaded by music-making angels clearly reflect the growing popularity of the viol throughout this area of the western Mediterranean. One of the earliest depictions of the viol, probably dating from the 1470s, appears in the work of a Catalan artist active in a northern district of the province of Valencia known as the Maestrazgo. Photographs of this painting (plate 1) show it to have been in a very poor condition, but it has since been restored (perhaps even completely repainted) and can now be seen in the church of San Felíu just above the town of Játiva.
Proportion in the Music of Dunstable
Authors: Trowell Brian
Published: January 2007

How did John Dunstable compose? What principles did he follow when he sat down to plan a piece of music? Manfred Bukofzer's collected edition of his works is now twenty-six years old, and when we consider how little of his music is performed and known as sound, over a quarter of a century after its publication, it is plain that I am not the only person to find him an enigma. We hear a great deal more of Dufay's music: his concise, elegant phrasing, neat, sectional, easily apprehended construction, constant variety of texture and integrated, purposeful bass-lines make Dunstable seem obscure, remote and inhuman by comparison – for all his mastery of the long melodic vault and springing ribs of cross-rhythm. One can follow the harmonic logic and the bar-to-bar detail of rhythm and phrasing, but not the plan of the whole, with the one exception of the isorhythmic works, which accordingly are performed more frequently than his other sacred music. One feels much more at home with their clear, logical structure and steady, purposeful crescendo of rhythmic excitement.
The Dublin Musical Scene 1749–50 and its Background
Authors: Boydell Brian
Published: January 2007

The musical season in Dublin which occurred at the exact mid-point of the eighteenth century was initiated on Monday, 11 September with an open-air performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks at Marlborough Bowling Green. Unlike on the occasion of the first performance five months previously in London, there is no evidence that the gentlemen (who paid one shilling entrance) and their consorts (admitted free) were disappointed by a failure of the ‘Grand Fire-work between the Acts’. Two days later, on Wednesday, 13 September, a second performance was arranged by Dr Mosse in the New Gardens in Great Britain Street as a benefit for the first-ever Lying-in Hospital, which he had opened in 1745. There were two further performances of Mr Handel's popular entertainment before the onset of autumn brought an end to the summer series of open-air concerts; and on Friday, 22 September, the winter season began with a performance of The Beggar's Opera at the Theatre in Smock Alley, where Thomas Sheridan had assembled ‘the best Band of Instrumental Performers ever heard in this Kingdom’. In spite of criticism that Sheridan had ‘struck woeful bargains [with] the Musical Tribe’, the Smock Alley Theatre was entering the second season that featured 22 instrumentalists, 6 principal singers, and two distinguished leaders in the persons of Signor Pasquali and Mr Lampe. Meanwhile, Mr Dubourg, Master of the King's Music in Ireland, and Miss Oldmixon, the popular oratorio soprano were ‘waiting for the first fair wind’ to come to Dublin; and it was rumoured that ‘Mr Handel is coming over to entertain the town this season’. The 1749–50 season, so auspiciously inaugurated, has been chosen for special attention because it was particularly rich and varied, is comparatively well documented, and it represents the culmination of the first phase of development under the more settled conditions after the Williamite war before the changes which led to the Act of Union in 1800 began to have a significant impact on the social life of the community. Before focusing attention on this particular season, a more general description of the musical background in eighteenth-century Dublin will help to place it in perspective.
Music in 18th-Century Oxford
Authors: Wollenberg Susan
Published: January 2007

‘Music in 18th-Ccntury Oxford’ perhaps most immediately evokes the names of Handel, Haydn and the Holywell Music Room. But these represent only part of a continuous tradition of music, richly cultivated in Oxford society and established as important in various aspects of Oxford life. The title of this paper might more accurately have been phrased ‘Music in the University of Oxford in the 18th Century’, although in fact, then as now, town and gown appear closely connected from a musical point of view. Music in a university context has received concentrated scholarly attention with regard to an earlier period, but there seems to be no equivalent study of post-Renaissance music from this particular angle. Nor does there appear to be any published survey of music in Oxford. Apparently no one has previously put together information on music in 18th-century Oxford, except, partially but most valuably, the Rev. J. H. Mee in his book on the Holywell Music Room, and Charles Abdy Williams, whose lists of musical degree-holders are complemented by general commentary on university music. In theNew Grovearticle on Oxford, the period up to and including the 17th century, and the 19th and 20th centuries, are, quite rightly, treated to extended discussion; little, however, is said to link the 18th century historically with either of these periods. Yet it was in the 18th century that the outcome of those weekly music meetings which had begun at Oxford during the Commonwealth was seen in the Holywell concerts, and that an interest in early music, again traceable back to origins in the preceding century, developed in Oxford circles; and both of these, and other, aspects of music in Oxford were then taken up into various 19th-century developments.
‘Our Awin Scottis Use’: Chant Usage in Medieval Scotland
Authors: Woods Isobel
Published: January 2007

In September 1507, James IV of Scotland issued a licence to the Edinburgh printers Chepman and Millar to produce, among other books, mass books, manuals, matin books and breviaries ‘efter our awin Scottis use’. This same licence (see Appendix 1) prescribes that these new books be used throughout Scotland and that all imports according to Salisbury use be banned. This Scottish use, therefore, was considered to be a separate entity – but what was it?
Orpheus, Ovid and Opera
Authors: Sternfeld Frederick W.
Published: January 2007

It was in the Shakespeare year of 1964 that I first realized to what extent my work on English stage music lacked foundation and depth without a better knowledge of the practices of dramatic music in Italy. Even at that early stage I recognized that the key plot for intermedi and the first operas was the story of Orpheus which looms so impressively, both in quantity and in quality, at the birth of opera. Indeed, it is a plot that continues to act as a springboard for the imagination of composers of operas and ballets, even after the seventeenth century, as witnessed by the works of Gluck, Offenbach and Stravinsky.
A Road Not Taken: Theinred of Dover's Theory of Species
Authors: Snyder John L.
Published: January 2007

The music theory of the Middle Ages had its origins in the music theory of late antiquity. As Markovits observes, ‘The fundamental structure of ancient music theory is the tetrachord’; in turn, the medieval gamut had its origin in the Greater Perfect System, and was similarly constructed from conjunct and disjunct tetrachords. The chromatic and enharmonic genera disappeared, but the tetrachord synemmenon remained as the source of the only sanctioned medieval altered note, the B♭.
Mozart's Fee for Così fan tutte
Authors: Edge Dexter
Published: January 2007

According to one of his more heart-rending letters to Michael Puchberg, Mozart expected to receive 200 ducats from the directorate of the Viennese court theatres for composing Così fan tutte. This amount, equivalent to 900 gulden, would have been twice the usual fee paid for a newly composed opera at that time. Mozart's statement to Puchberg has long been accepted at face value, because the theatrical financial records for the season in which Così fan tutte had its première have been thought to be lost. Recently, however, an entry in a little-known theatrical ledger has come to light which shows that, in late February 1790, Mozart was paid 450 gulden for composing Così fan tutte, half of what he had claimed to expect. In attempting to account for the discrepancy between the documented payment and Mozart's expectation, this essay will investigate all fees and gifts received by composers and librettists for operas commissioned by the Viennese Nationaltheater from the founding of the German Singspiel in 1778 until the end of the theatrical season 1791–2. This investigation will not only help to suggest an explanation for the discrepancy, it will also illuminate the wider context in which Mozart's Viennese operas were commissioned, and will put into perspective the fees he was paid for them.
On the Musical Scale
Authors: Habens W. J.
Published: January 2007

In a footnote to Blaserna's “Theory of Sound in relation to Music” (p. 94), it is stated that Euler was acquainted with the importance of the numbers 2, 3, and 5, and that he “established upon them a rule for the development of our musical system.” To understand this statement it is necessary to know that a musical note is an effect of regular vibrations of a sounding body—that is to say, of vibrations occupying equal intervals of time; and that two notes cannot be consonant unless the proportion subsisting between their two rates of vibration is simple. These things being understood, it may be shown that the importance of the numbers 2, 3, and 5, employed for the purpose of expressing the ratios of vibration rates, cannot be overestimated. When the intervals between musical notes are expressed by the ratios of the vibration rates of the notes, these three numbers alone, with their squares, cubes, and other powers, and numbers arising from their intermultiplication, are capable of expressing the ratios of consonant notes; and not only so, but they alone are capable of expressing the ratios of all notes belonging to the same scale, and of all notes belonging to all scales into which it is possible to pass from the original scale by modulation.
Verdi and Wagner
Authors: Naylor Edward W.
Published: January 2007

The relations subsisting between the works of these two great men can only be said to have assumed the importance of a subject during the last few years. A subject, as such, it certainly is now, and one of real importance and interest.
Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas
Authors: Edwards F. G.
Published: January 2007

I venture to think that no apology is needed for bringing before you the subject of Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas—those works which have long been accepted as “classics” of the organ.
Why Do We Teach Harmony So Badly?
Authors: Sawyer Frank J.
Published: January 2007

Ladies and Gentlemen,—Before beginning my paper I wish to preface it with a few remarks as to its title. Some of our professors of harmony may doubtless—through misunderstanding that title—have thought that I was casting a slight on their ability to teach. If any did think so, let me hasten to say that any such idea was absolutely groundless, and entirely foreign from my meaning. As you all know, on the title everything depends. We musicians are but mortals, and unless our attention is arrested by something startling, we are apt to pass a matter over as commonplace.
Ancient Greek Music
Authors: Williams C. F. Abdy
Published: January 2007

I have often been asked the question, “How can we know anything about ancient Greek music?” or “How can any fragments of it that may be discovered be translated into modern notation?” The answer is simple enough. Of actual specimens of ancient Greek music, the existing examples may be counted on the fingers of the two hands, but a fairly considerable amount of its theory has come down to us in the works of Aristoxenus of Tarentum (who wrote treatises on harmonics and rhythm), Cleonides, Euclid, Nicomachus, Alypius (who has given us the complete notation), Gaudentius, Bacchius, senior, Aristides, Quintilianus (the anonymous writer), and finally Claudius Ptolemy and Plutarch. These authors flourished at various times, from about 300 B.C. to 200 A.D., the most ancient and the most important being Aristoxenus.
Literature Relating to the Recorder
Authors: Welch Christopher
Published: January 2007

What was a recorder ? How many different answers have been given to this question.

An Englishman in search of a reply would turn, as a matter of course, first of all to Johnson's Dictionary, where he would find that the cautious lexicographer, keeping on safe ground, pronounces a recorder to be “a kind of flute.” But if the inquirer, desirous of testing the correctness of the Doctor's statement by the light of a more modern authority, were to consult Webster, he would be told that a recorder was “a kind of flageolet,” for which, in a later edition, there is substituted another explanation: “an instrument resembling the flageolet.” Should this be deemed unsatisfactory, and recourse he had to the “Century Dictionary” (1889) for the latest declaration on the subject, a description of the instrument would come to light, but a description which adds at least one other to the statement in Webster which will not bear examination. A recorder is said to be “a musical instrument of the flageolet family, having a long tube with seven holes and a mouth-piece. In some cases an eighth, covered with gold beaters' skin, appears near the mouth-piece, apparently to influence the quality of the tone.”
The Giorgi Flute
Authors: Standish H.
Published: January 2007

Ladies and Gentlemen,—In introducing to your notice this evening the Giorgi Patent Flute and the Giorgi Patent Flute Head as applied to other style cylinder flutes, I beg, on behalf of Messrs. Joseph Wallis & Son, to thank you for the opportunity you have afforded me of demonstrating the superiority which we claim the Giorgi flute possesses over other flutes.
The Memorizing of Piano Music for Performance
Authors: Shinn Frederick G.
Published: January 2007

In introducing for your consideration this afternoon the subject of memory in connection with piano playing, I can hardly doubt that my subject is one in which every earnest student and every competent teacher of the piano must feel no slight or passing interest. From the time the beginner learns the alphabetical names of the notes of the keyboard, by remembering their position in relation to the groups of two and three black notes, until he reaches — if he ever does — the highest summit of his profession as a pianist, does the cultivation of the power of memory, in one form or another, enter in no small degree into his studies.
Violins and Violin Manufacture from the Death of Stradivari to the Present Time
Authors: Piper Towry
Published: January 2007

There is probably no department of human industry wherein the predominating influence of a master hand has been more forcibly and continuously displayed than in the case of Antonio Stradivari; and although my remarks are chiefly intended to be directed to the period subsequent to his death, it may nevertheless be well to preface them with one or two observations concerning this extraordinary man and his work.
The Æsthetic Treatment of Bach's Organ Music
Authors: Statham H. Heathcote
Published: January 2007

If some apology is required from an amateur for offering some remarks on this subject to an audience partly, at least, composed of professional musicians, I may say that perhaps few persons can have given more time and thought to this particular subject than I have. For a good many years of my life the study and practice of Bach's organ compositions was my principal recreation, especially with the view of getting all the effect from them for which a modern organ affords the opportunity; and there are none of the larger and more important compositions which I have not tried over and over again, in various ways, with this object. The suggestions I have to make, therefore, are at all events not hastily arrived at.
Hungarian Music of a Thousand Years
Authors: de Györy Ilona
Published: January 2007

The reason why music appeals to every side of our nature is that music itself is the result of the activity of the whole nature of a man. Being called forth by the travail of thought, feeling, and will, its effect is the stirring of the thoughts, emotions, and volitions of the listener. It reminds me of one of the natural phenomena in my Oriental country—those mysterious springs that well forth from unknown depths and penetrate into mysterious depths again; the strength which enabled them to break their way from the dark, also enables them to find their path into new depths—the greater the warmth that gave existence to the well, the brighter it sparkles, the higher it rises, and the deeper it sinks again.
Prolegomena to Musical Criticism
Authors: Buck Percy C.
Published: January 2007

It has been said, with a great deal of truth, —and I think that few of those present will want to question the validity of the statement,—that a love of discussion is one of the most elementary and most permanent characteristics of the human race. It is, indeed, natural and right that our desire should be to exercise actively those gifts which have placed us above the lower animals; and the progress towards freedom of thought and conduct in all spheres, which is a mark of the English speaking races beyond others, is assuredly due to our highly-developed love of combat in word as well as in action. So true is this, that as a nation we are commonly accused of being willing, and even anxious, to maintain a position we have no belief in, provided only we can thereby provoke and sustain an argument.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Authors: Daymond Emily R.
Published: January 2007

The striking example of heredity shown in the evolution and development of the. Bach family is no doubt familiar to you all, so that a very brief mention of it will be sufficient. For generations, from the time of Veit Bach about 1555, they had been musicians, so well knówn that at one time town musicians in Erfurt were called “Bachs,” whether they included any of the family or not. This steady development of their art culminated in the person of John Sebastian Bach, born 1685, and it is one of the curious facts in musical history that after his death it ceased in so short a time. True, his sons were all musical, and two or three of them made some considerable mark; but with the exception of the eldest, Wilhelm Friedemann, it was in a totally different line from that in which their father's genius had moved, though it is easy to trace the influence which his work had on their compositions.
Some Thoughts on Polyphonic Rhythm
Authors: Scott Charles Kennedy
Published: January 2007

It has been said that one of our chief concerns in life is to justify our own particular point of view. Which allows the cynical retort, that this is not so very different from trying to prove one's own personal value. The more generous way, however, is to suppose no such aim. The best argument or philosophy must be based upon personal experience. If strong feeling does not underlie it, it will certainly be of no account. As one, therefore, who is keenly alive to the beauties of polyphonic music, I trust I may be pardoned if I attempt to justify my convictions, and I shall do so on what I hope are rather more than the grounds of taste. Schumann, I believe, once said that an artist's dictum is worth a ton of aesthetics—or to that effect. And this is true enough. But it is also true that an artist's dictum will be more respected if he can buttress it with what, to him at any rate, is logical argument. But beyond this, I think argument on old music is particularly necessary at the present time. For very skilful stand has been made against its principles in certain quarters; and if, as some of us would have, there is to be a spread in both the knowledge and love of old art, we must be prepared to advance with something more in our hands than that foolish old weapon “De gustibus non est disputandum.” I speak from a certain pain and suffering of its misuse. I was organist of a church where sometimes I allowed myself the joy of playing a Bach Fugue after service. On such occasions, almost invariably, a certain cleric would come up to me and say, “What ! more German scales, Mr. Scott ?” And if I ventured to disagree with him I was always met with “De gustibus, etc.,” which he thought supported his case to a nicety. So I know the value of Mr. “De gustibus” pretty well.
The Songs of Hugo Wolf
Authors: Austin Frederic
Published: January 2007

I do not propose this afternoon to dwell particularly upon the circumstances of the life of Hugo Wolf; rather to consider the main characteristics of his work and to speak of their exemplification in the songs that are to be sung to you. It will be sufficient then, to indicate shortly the main course of his life. He was born in 1860 at Windischgrätz, in Austria, and at the age of fifteen entered the Conservatoire of Vienna. There he became involved, through misrepresentation it seems, in some difference with a professor, in consequence of which he was obliged to leave. For some years following, he had a hard struggle for existence, taking whatever odd musical employment he could obtain, pursuing in the meantime his musical studies by himself. He has related how at this time he laboriously analysed the works of Bach and Beethoven, the songs of Schubert and Schumann, and exercised himself in the technique of composition generally, in the most exhaustive manner. Quite early, his own incipient creative preferences declared themselves on the side of modernity. For Wagner he had an unbounded admiration. Berlioz, too, was a particular idol of his, and it is recorded how he would break off uncongenial tasks, such as the giving of lessons, or the training of a chorus in an opera for which he did not care, to plunge into the performance from memory of long stretches of the music of his favourite composers. Always a great reader, with decided and educated literary tastes, he was able to obtain, in 1886, an appointment as musical critic to the Vienna Salonblatt. Trenchant and outspoken in his style and opinions, his articles soon aroused attention. He condemned unsparingly, with a mordant and ruthless pen, what he held to be bad; and for what he admired he had equally outspoken appreciation. Implacably honest, his opinions led him into direct conflict with the Brahms-Hanslick party in Vienna—a circumstance that was to procure the severe handling of his own work later on; when his critics did not fail to wound him with the weapons he had himself forged.
Elizabethan Lyrics and Love-Songs
Authors: Waddy Reginald
Published: January 2007

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : On perusing the list of papers read before this Association in previous years, I find that very few have treated of the diction of song and none at all of Elizabethan song—and this during a period of thirty-seven years. My subject is therefore quite a novel one so far as this Association is concerned.
Modern Harmonic Tendencies
Authors: Browne W. Denis
Published: January 2007

The revolution that has taken and is still taking place in music since the beginning of the 12th century is one of the most sudden and exciting revolutions in the history of any art. In its earliest origin music was conceived entirely from the point of view of counterpoint—the writing of one melody against another. The horizontal aspect was the only one possible in a time when the ancient modes were supreme: and to the present day almost all primitive music ignores the claims of harmony altogether. Even the combination of several melodies was not originally regarded by the Ancients as having a genuinely harmonic effect They were so concerned with the movements of the various parts in a horizontal direction that the perpendicular effect of the music was disregarded. After a while, however, it became clear that concerted music must be regarded from another aspect as well as from the purely contrapuntal : and composers began definitely to construct their concerted works on a harmonic basis, employing of course only the simplest concords at first. Experimenters were not lacking to expand the field of harmonic variety; and Monteverde horrified his contemporaries by the extraordinary freedom and boldness of his methods. Hitherto discords were known to all writers, but they had always been carefully prepared and as carefully resolved. Monteverde in his madrigals simply disregarded the accepted rules of counterpoint and used the diminished triad and the unprepared dissonances of the seventh and ninth. In the madrigal “Cruda Amarilli” examples of all these things are found.
The Genevan Psalter of 1562; Set in Four-Part Harmony by Claude Goudimel, in 1565
Authors: Woodward G. R.
Published: January 2007

The germ of the Genevan Psalter is to be found in a metrical French version of Psalm 6. It consists of ten stanzas in six lines, in the measure of Insbruch, ich muss dich lassen, beginning Ne vueille pas, O Sire, the workmanship of Clément Marot. For full particulars of the history and literary compositions of this remarkable man, to whom French lyric poetry, as well as the Genevan Psalter, owes so much, the student is referred to M. Douen's “Clement Marot et le Psautier Huguenot,” a review of which, written by Major G. A. Crawford, appeared in the Musical Times during the months of June till November, 1881. But in a lecture on the French Psalter it is needful to say something, however briefly and disjointedly, on its originator.
Bach's Cantata Libretti
Authors: Terry C. Sanford
Published: January 2007

We have the statement of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, confirmed by Forkel, Bach's earliest biographer, that his father composed five Cantatas for every Sunday and Festival of the ecclesiastical year. Concerted music was sung at Leipzig annually on forty-three Sundays and sixteen week-days. Bach therefore must have written at least 295 Cantatas. Of this number he composed at least thirty before 1723. Hence approximately 265 were written at Leipzig. But Bach's fertility does not appear to have outlived the year 1744. We have reason, therefore, to conclude that the 265 Leipzig Cantatas were written in the course of twenty-one years, that is, between 1723 and 1744. To complete that number Bach must have composed a new Cantata every month, a surprising but demonstrable conclusion.
Russian Church Music
Authors: Henderson A. M.
Published: January 2007

The literature and art of Russia have long been known and appreciated in this country; indeed, in the domain of literature the names of Tolstoy, Dostoieffsky, Turgenev, Pushkin, and Gogol, are now almost as familiar in Britain as those of our own great writers. There is also very real appreciation of the musical art of that great country, in so far as we refer to the fine symphonic works, chamber-music, and songs of distinguished musicians like Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rachmaninoff and others.
English Sacred Folk Song of the West Gallery Period (Circa 1695–1820)
Authors: Pearce Charles W.
Published: January 2007

Folk song—sacred and secular alike—may be either traditional or ephemeral: that is to say, some of it lives, much of it doesn't. Of the making of folk song there is no end, for from time immemorial it has been an irrepressible outward expression in verse and song of the daily life and common thought of the people. Any striking event or circumstance—national or provincial—has scarcely ever failed to elicit some sort of versification which may vary in character from the local vernacular slang prevalent at the time, to the carefully polished lines of the educated poet. Words so produced get music set to them: those of the better kind attract the pens of cultivated composers; those of the baser sort are set by obscure but publisher-pushed persons who seem to rise up suddenly from the vasty deep, absolutely unskilled in the art of musical composition, but in some mysterious way gifted with a knack of originating—or otherwise supplying—a type of melody easily caught by the public ear, and rapidly transferred from lip to lip of the vulgar multitude, until the whole land is filled with it.
Opera in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Lejeune Caroline A.
Published: January 2007

Perhaps the story had better begin with a letter which Swift received one morning at his Deanery in Dublin, in the spring of the year 1729. It was from his old friend Dr. Arbuthnot, formerly physician to Queen Anne. He writes that he has just been attending poor John Gay, and has pulled him through a very severe attack of fever, from which “a physician who had not been passionately his friend could not have saved him. I had beside my personal concern for him” the doctor goes on, “other motives of my care. He is now become a public person, a little Sacheverell;. … one of the obstructions to the peace of Europe, the terror of ministers. He has got several turned out of their places, the greatest ornament of the court banished from it for his sake, another great lady in danger of being chassée likewise, about seven or eight duchesses pushing forward who shall suffer martyrdom upon his account first. He is the darling of the city. If he should travel about the country he would have hecatombs of roasted oxen sacrificed to him … and I can assure you this is the very identical John Gay—the inoffensive John Gay—whom you formerly knew and lodged with in Whitehall two years ago.”
The Romantic Spirit in Music
Authors: Dent Edward J.
Published: January 2007

So much has already been written on the antithesis of “classical” and “romantic” music that it may seem a waste of time to approach the subject again. I certainly have no intention this afternoon of re-opening all the old controversies, or even of attempting to summarize the attempts that have been made to define exactly the meaning of these two familiar adjectives. My object is to look at romantic music—more especially the earlier romantic music—from a point of view which seems hitherto to have been neglected.
Mussorgsky's Youth and Early Development
Authors: Calvocoressi M. D.
Published: January 2007

The history of musical England's attitude to Mussorgsky's music can be summed up simply by mentioning two landmarks. In 1905 appeared the sixth volume of the Oxford History of Music, devoted to the Romantic period, by Dannreuther, who dismissed Mussorgsky's music with these words, “wilfully eccentric and barbarously ugly,” without a word of qualification. In 1928, when the genuine full text of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunof was published for the first time, the musical critic of The Times devoted the major portion of a very long article to showing how very uncalled for, and indeed how wrong, was the alteration by Rimsky-Korsakof of one single note at a certain spot in a scene in the opera Boris Godunof.
Recent Work in Folk-Music
Authors: Howes Frank
Published: January 2007

In the years before the European War folk-music was an issue in English musical politics. That is to say, musicians debated how far the revival of interest in our own national melody, which was an undisputed fact, was really important for English musical life and, as a further corollary, for the whole art of music. The issue no longer burns. People like myself who have an intense personal love of folk-song think that the case for it has been established; those who do not include it among their musical enthusiasms point to the apparent general apathy and say, if not in so many words, at any rate with a movement of their shoulders: We always said the stuff was only fit for cranks. It is not my purpose to try to fan these dead embers, though I am going to rake over one old controversy in this paper. My aim is to offer to you as a jury representing the musical people of this country a survey of the present position of folk-song regarded both scientifically and artistically, and more particularly to present a balance sheet of the last dozen years' working in this department of national music.
John Dunstable and the Music of his Time
Authors: Bukofzer Manfred
Published: January 2007

It is not the first time that your Association offers an opportunity to discuss the importance of John Dunstable in the history of music. I only recall the paper read by my esteemed colleague Professor Van den Borren who had the honour of speaking to you about The Genius of Dunstable seventeen years ago. Moreover, I am convinced that this paper will not be the last one on the same subject; for Dunstable is a figure who has a fascination which the contemporaries of the composer must already have felt more than we do to-day. The fame of Dunstable spread over the whole cultured world in a short time as the theorists of the fifteenth century give evidence and as the places of origin of the manuscripts which contain Dunstable's compositions prove. These sources were written in England, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany and even Spain. And still, in the sixteenth century when all preceding composers lived in the shadow of such masters as Okeghem and Josquin, Dunstable figures in public opinion as a mythical ancestor of music art, and is regarded even as the “inventor of counterpoint.” Though it is evident that this legend was nothing but a confusion it was seriously maintained by modern writers. It is true, Johannes Tinctoris, the greatest theorist about 1480, tells us in the introduction of his Ars Contrapuncti (1477) that the music of the last forty years was more perfect than all preceding music, and that only that music which was written by most excellent musicians as Dunstable, Dufay and Okeghem really was worth hearing. A Spanish monk goes so far as to add to Tinctoris's statement his own conviction that the music of these three masters was not only the best of that time but, also, not surpassable in the future.
A Survey of Music in New Zealand: Its Weaknesses and Its Opportunities
Authors: Rucroft Violet A.
Published: January 2007

In these momentous days when every human being is feeling his life directly affected by the War, it is encouraging to find thinking people bestirring themselves with Charters and Plans for the future preservation of peace, and though we hear much vague talk about “post-war reconstruction,” there is a certain amount of agreement on the view that in future people must be taught the right use of leisure and that the extension of education must be one of the principal means of bringing this about.
Italian Opera in London
Authors: Dent E.J.
Published: January 2007

The regular performance of Italian opera, sung in Italian, has been carried on in London almost without interruption for about two centuries. We may date its beginning from 1705, when Vanbrugh's new theatre in the Haymarket was opened with Gli Amori d’Ergasto by Jacob Greber, and we may conveniently take 1891 as the date of its official end, since in 1892 Augustus Harris ceased to call his enterprise “Royal Italian Opera” and announced it simply as “Royal Opera.” As far as I know no history of this Italian opera organisation has ever been written, although there is plenty of information about it available in various separate books, as well as documentary sources of all kinds such as contemporary newspapers, librettos, programmes and so forth.
Mozart's Musical Autobiography
Authors: Antcliffe Herbert
Published: January 2007

IN this paper I am not, primarily, concerned with facts. Some facts I shall state, other possible facts I shall guess at. My principal object is that of raising, and of suggesting an answer to, the question whether what we may call certain psychological possibilities exist. For this purpose I have taken the three best-known of Mozart's major works and with some little analysis, some application of their history—and perhaps some degree of imagination or fancy—endeavoured to show that they prove my thesis that programme music need not arise from conscious application of certain methods of composition; and that, in the subtler sense of the term, it is not dependent for its proper interpretation on a knowledge of the composer's source of inspiration.
On the Beats of Mistuned Harmonic Consonances
Authors: Bosanquet R. H. M.
Published: January 2007

The present Paper forms a continuation of one presented to the Association a short time ago. The subject was first put prominently before the Association in Mr. Spottiswoode's Paper “On Beats and Combination Tones.” I subsequently showed some of the elementary experimental methods by means of which I attempted to deal with the questions raised. Since that time I have been placed in possession of much larger means for dealing with these questions. I propose to give to-day some account of the experiments and results I have since arrived at. The apparatus does not differ in principle from that formerly exhibited to you; and as the improvement in its efficiency is principally due to the introduction of a large bellows driven by a steam-engine, and the experiments themselves are not suitable for verification by an audience, I have not attempted to bring any of the apparatus here.
On Some Italian and Spanish Treatises on Music of the Seventeenth Century
Authors: Ouseley F. A. Gore
Published: January 2007

About three years ago I had the privilege of reading a paper before this Association “On the Early Italian and Spanish Treatises on Counterpoint and Harmony.” At that time I had almost made up my mind not to carry on my remarks beyond the limits of the sixteenth century. I said that “the reason I had given no specimens of works of the seventeenth century was that it was about that time that modern tonality took its rise, mainly through the innovations introduced by Monteverde, and that the art was thus revolutionised.” At the same time I thought that perhaps “on some future occasion I might be allowed to trace the progress of the art down to more recent periods.” This further history of the theoretical development of the art of music is the subject on which I wish to enlist your kind attention to-day. It is by no means so easy to treat of this later period as it was of the earlier, because so many treatises were published in the seventeenth century that the task of selection becomes very difficult, and also because some musical facts and theories are involved which have no small bearing on controversies still under discussion at the present day. Before the seventeenth century modulation from key to key, as we now understand it, did not exist. Indeed, there could hardly be said to be any really fixed tonality beyond that of the old ecclesiastical scales, to which all music was rigidly conformed, except indeed such rustic melodies and dance-tunes as had escaped the influence of the scholastic theories then in vogue.
The Musical Scene in Europe in 1829
Authors: Hughes Rosemary
Published: January 2007

The historian's art is one of wisdom after the event. In this art, distance in time acts like altitude in aerial photography, revealing outlines and proportions which often cannot be seen from the ground-level of contemporary life. Yet the contemporary's immediate contact with the daily scene lends vividness to his story, and even his prejudices and miscalculations are part of the climate of the age. When, in the summer of 1829, Vincent Novello, accompanied by his wife, set out on his journey across Europe and back, he equipped himself with a notebook in which to record his impressions, and his copious jottings provide a valuable reflection of that segment of the musical scene that he saw.
The Frankfort Group
Authors: Armstrong Thomas
Published: January 2007

The Frankfort group, or Gang, was the name given in later years to the band of young English musicians who found themselves quite by chance studying together at the Hoch Conservatorium at Frankfort-on-Main in the 1890's. The members of the group were Cyril Scott, Roger Quilter, Balfour Gardiner, Percy Grainger and Norman O'Neill. Associated with these in later years, though never actually members of the group, were Delius, who came into touch through his great friendship with O'Neill and Balfour Gardiner, Thomas Beecham, who gave first performances of many works by these composers, and Frederic Austin, that very gifted man who obtained eminence in three careers—as composer, singer, and teacher.
The Operas of Stephen Storace
Authors: Fiske Roger
Published: January 2007

It is almost a tradition that Musica Britannica editors come before you to tell you of the music they have unearthed. But tonight I shall not talk to you about No Song, No Supper as it has already had three broadcasts and for some of you may have lost its novelty. It is the only English opera by Storace that survives in full score, but delightful though it is, it is not really typical of Storace's work as a whole. So I propose to limit myself to Storace's full-length operas (No Song is a short opera, an afterpiece), and I hope to show you that he aimed to write a type of opera much more akin to Il Seraglio than to any ballad opera, that he introduced the Viennese classical style into our theatres, that he introduced the ensemble with action and the extended finale into our operas, and that he had more sense of the theatre than any other English opera composer of the eighteenth century.