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Nicolò Palazzetti's book, "Béla Bartók in Italy: The Politics of Myth-Making," explores the composer's relationship with Italy and the formation of his myth in the context of Italian politics. The book challenges the perception of Bartók as an anti-fascist, arguing that his reputation as such is a myth of our age. Palazzetti examines Bartók's visits to Italy, his reception by Italian composers, and the influence of his music in the country. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of Bartók's impact on Italian music and culture, shedding light on the complex relationship between art and politics. [Extracted from the article]

The United Kingdom has for centuries suffered the reputation of an 'unmusical nation' that could not produce a great composer or compete with the rich musical cultures of Germany, Italy or Russia. In the 1930s, members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) who worked in the musical professions began to challenge and reject this long-standing stereotype. These self-described Blackshirts hoped to achieve a 'rebirth' of British classical music under the leadership of Oswald Mosley and expel racially impure 'alien' performers from Britain's houses of culture. As British fascists conceived and debated these plans, the example of Nazi Germany loomed large in their imaginations. BUF Blackshirts professed admiration for Joseph Goebbels's campaigns against 'degenerate' music and imitated the Nazi Party's völkisch criticisms of jazz, modern art and consumerism. Especially intriguing to Mosley's followers was the Nazi cult of Richard Wagner, which offered a compelling illustration of how a hypothetical fascist Britain might revere a historical composer as an emblem of racial nationalism. The Third Reich's glorification of Wagner prompted debate within the BUF about which figure, or figures, could fulfil such a role in Britain, with two schools of thought predominating: either the late Victorian generation of composers or the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Tudor masters. If Nazi cultural policy was a source of inspiration for British fascists, it was equally one of intimidation and self-doubt, reviving insecurities that the British people were a 'musically inferior race' unable to produce a composer rivalling Wagner's genius. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a book titled "Medieval Polyphony and Song" by Helen Deeming and Frieda van der Heijden. The book provides an accessible overview of medieval polyphony and song, covering a period of over 500 years. It is organized geographically, with chapters focusing on different European regions and their musical cultures. The book includes socio-cultural summaries at the beginning of each chapter, providing context for the music discussed. While the book is praised for its clarity and accessibility, some scholars argue that it presents a fixed and uncontested narrative of the musical past, overlooking recent scholarship and debates. Overall, the book offers a valuable introduction to medieval music for readers interested in the subject. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the dispute between composer La Monte Young and other members of the Theatre of Eternal Music, including Tony Conrad and John Cale, regarding authorship and credit for their collaborative minimalist music performances in the 1960s. The author, Patrick Nickleson, explores how this dispute reflects the challenge to traditional notions of authorship and the categorization of minimalist music within classical music historiography. Nickleson argues that early minimalism's revolutionary nature encouraged different interpretations and understandings of the same events, leading to conflicts over names and identities. The article also highlights the influence of French philosopher Jacques Rancière's ideas on education and social hierarchy in Nickleson's analysis. [Extracted from the article]

In the article "Music, Politics and Society in Ancient Rome" by Harry Morgan, the author challenges the belief that Roman music was solely influenced by Greek and Etruscan music. Instead, Morgan argues that Greek music had a significant impact on Roman music, as musicians from the Greek East flocked to Rome during the expansion of the empire. The author also explores the connection between music and politics in ancient Rome, discussing how music was used to entertain and manipulate the Roman audience. Additionally, the article examines the association between Roman emperors, such as Augustus and Nero, and music, highlighting their self-identification with Apollo and their use of music for self-promotion. Overall, the article aims to integrate music into the broader understanding of Roman social and political history. [Extracted from the article]

Andrea F Bohlman's book, "Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland," offers a unique and immersive exploration of the role of music in the Solidarity movement in Poland. Bohlman combines ethnography, historical musicology, analysis, and archival work to provide a multi-angled approach to understanding the relationship between music and politics in late twentieth-century Poland. The book examines the sonic surroundings of the Solidarity movement, including the use of tape culture, the impact of martial law on music, and the role of protest songs and hymns. Bohlman's work challenges conventional interpretations of Polish history and offers a compelling and original perspective on the subject. [Extracted from the article]

Postage stamps have in recent years been positioned as token purveyors of nation, with countries disseminating carefully curated ideas of national identity to their own citizens and international audiences. This article complements existing research by using South African music-themed postage stamps to read the changing narratives of the nation, or 'music nationalism' in philately. The article analyses music-themed postage stamps issued in South Africa between 1961 and 2015. It confirms that the representation of music nationalism in apartheid philately aligned with Afrikaner nationalist politics, with clear divides between 'White' and 'Black' genres. Post-apartheid music-themed stamps draw attention to forgotten music histories previously overshadowed by apartheid ideology while still engaging with musical threads of the apartheid past. Most significantly, the article illuminates the other forces at play behind what many accept to be a process solely steered and controlled by the state, revealing much about South Africa's democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines and contextualizes Nadia Boulanger's musical and non-musical mourning practices within fin de siècle French culture, her family history with mourning, and her personal approaches to loss. Through examination of archival materials, including letters, datebooks, and concert programmes, as well as her published writings, I argue that Nadia mourned her sister Lili after her death in 1918 through a set of embodied practices that either viscerally reminded her of Lili or allowed her to resemble an idealized image of her sister. In addition, through analysis of Nadia's and Lili's post-1914 compositions in the context of mourning, this article also shows how both Boulanger sisters' mourning practices and their idiosyncratic, although socio-culturally and spiritually inflected, understandings of loss and grief shaped their musical compositions. By detailing the ways that mourning and musical choices intertwined for Nadia Boulanger, this essay sheds new light on her career, while also demonstrating the importance of considering emotional practices in music history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the "Smith Collection" of Handel manuscripts, which consists of 25 volumes of Handel's works. These volumes were assembled in the second half of the 18th century and are now housed at the British Library. The collection includes Handel's oratorio-style works arranged in chronological order. The article also explores the history and development of the collection, including the addition of new volumes to supplement the earlier "Frederick" collection. The document provides tables and graphs that offer detailed information on payments made for music copying and related activities, as well as information on the specific scores in the collection, including manuscript numbers, payment details, and copyists. ." The text also discusses the contributions of Simpson and Teede to the collection, as well as the identity of "Mr. Teede" and the possibility of multiple copyists with similar handwriting. The author expresses gratitude to those who assisted in the research. [Extracted from the article]

An Unnatural Attitude: Phenomenology in Weimar Musical Thought. An Unnatural Attitude: Phenomenology in Weimar Musical Thought. New Material Histories of Music Series, edited by Davies, James Q. and Mathew, Nicholas. [Extracted from the article]

This response to Stephen Lett's article draws parallels between the institutional histories of the Society for Music Theory (SMT) and the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS). While both societies have struggled with racial diversity and inclusion, the structural racism that has pervaded the BHS since the civil rights era offers a potent and eerily familiar example of how seemingly innocuous, apolitical institutions can be sites of exclusion and inequity that plague the United States at large. Echoing Lett's sentiments, I urge my fellow SMT members to recognize the inherently political nature of our craft as we reassess and rebuild our Society's culture in this period of reckoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides a list of recent titles in the field of music, covering a wide range of topics such as specific composers, music theory, cultural commentary, and the history of music. The books are published by various publishers and cover different time periods and regions. Some of the titles include "Vaughan Williams and His World," "On African Music: Techniques, Influences, Scholarship," and "Hidden Treasures: Cultural, Social and Political Commentary in Mahler's Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn." [Extracted from the article]

However, if I am to be convinced of the utility of metatonality as a concept, in place of synonyms such as "neo-tonality", "extended tonality", "centric music", and so on, it will probably take another book. There are three principal arguments about the relationship between chromaticism and tonality in music-theoretical research of the past few decades. [Extracted from the article]

The article in Music Theory Spectrum introduces various contributors in the field of music theory. Gavin S. K. Lee, Ryan Martin, Toru Momii, Bryan Parkhurst, Sam Reenan, Oğuz Şehiraltı, James Sullivan, and Benedict Taylor are highlighted for their research and teaching in areas such as race, gender, social impacts of music, interculturality, and rhythm and meter. These scholars come from diverse backgrounds and institutions, showcasing a wide range of expertise in music theory and practice. [Extracted from the article]

Accordingly, the authors argue that for a correct perspective on music theory, one should realize the insignificance of the whole current musicological enterprise and contemplate the Golden Record in space to theorize rightly about music from earth. Around the "mission impossible" of the Golden Record, Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding develop a new music theory of everything that is based on an object-oriented ontology of sound. I was holding my heart when I read in the first sentence of I Alien Listening i that the book began in 2016 on the back of a napkin, when the two highly esteemed authors met during a conference and shared their ideas about a revolutionary "theory of everything" (p. 7). [Extracted from the article]

The music of the nineteenth-century English asylum provides a rare insight into the place of music within the structure of a medical institution during this period. Yet with archives literally 'silent', how far can the sound and experience of music be retrieved and reconstructed? Drawing on critical archive theory and the idea of the soundscape as well as musicological and historical practice, this article questions how we can investigate asylum soundscapes through the silences of the archive, and how we can use the resulting processes to deepen our relationship with the archive and enrichen other aspects of historical and archive studies. I argue that in drawing attention to new forms of evidence in order to address the literal 'silence' of the nineteenth-century asylum, new approaches to metaphorical 'silences' can be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a new volume in Brepols's French series of medieval music catalogues, which focuses on manuscript fragments with musical notation held in the National Archive in Paris and the Archive of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre in Solesmes. The catalogue provides detailed information about each fragment, including its siglum, liturgical function, contents, origin, and provenance. However, the absence of photographic reproductions limits the ability to independently assess and compare the fragments. While the catalogue is useful for archivists and provides information to musicologists, it does not take full advantage of today's technologies. [Extracted from the article]

The stakes are high, and Harper-Scott goes all in on "the tonality" (p. 100), which he deems the most "powerful ... autonomous musical procedure", whereby 'certain logical relations ... must and shall obtain across the entire space of a musical movement or work'. Harper-Scott thus disparages efforts to expand the canon (p. 161) - he gives no satisfactory explanation as to why today's classical canon as formed is "correct", it just I is i - and he asserts that "low" or "popular" styles are "utterly familiar, undemanding, saleable, and ephemeral" (p. 78). Though perceptive in terms of the musical details in which Harper-Scott is interested, his treatment is conceptually distant from its touchstone, a comment of Adorno's that Harper-Scott invokes in his penultimate chapter (pp. 152-3). [Extracted from the article]

In these operas, he infers, the association of coloratura with expressions of joy sounds dramaturgically false, and coloratura could therefore be heard as an omen of tragedy. I Vocal Virtuosity i offers an intriguing and thought-provoking narrative about the nineteenth-century evolution of a specialized voice type: the coloratura soprano. The final chapter discusses the continuing presence of coloratura arias in the operas written towards the end of the nineteenth century, as echoes of both the spectacular glamour of Second Empire Paris, and the dazzling vocal virtuosity of the coloratura sopranos it engendered. [Extracted from the article]

Through the covid -19 pandemic, the choir of St Wulfram's Church, Grantham has approached elaborate Tudor polyphony via digital, virtual and hybrid methods. Remote music production devolves responsibility to individuals within a choir. It reframes trust dynamics among choir members, and between singers and their director. This helped singers to encounter polyphony in a new way while isolated from one another, rethinking repertory and re-evaluating their understanding of this period in music history. Re-creating historical performance factors by new means generated intriguing results. As in-person singing has gradually returned for parish church choirs, members have developed new confidence in singing polyphonic music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapin of course reminds us that social and musical networking is one example of how Romanticism moves across fluid boundaries, criss-crossing between private and public spheres, involving an interplay of ideas between composer and artwork. Music is often not well integrated with the wider complexities of what Romanticism represents or not mentioned at all, for example, Blackwell's I Companion to Romanticism i first published in 1999. The chapter on "Music, Romanticism, and Politics" by Katherine Hambridge brings us up to date with the political usages of Romanticism that I mentioned earlier. [Extracted from the article]

This document provides brief biographical information about several contributors to the journal Music Theory Spectrum. The contributors are scholars and professors in the field of music theory, with research interests ranging from tonal repertoires of the twentieth century to computational models of music and transformational approaches. Their work has been published in various academic journals and they have expertise in areas such as performance, improvisation, identity, race, and musicology. [Extracted from the article]

In the spirit of the Western Early Music movement, Rietzsch tried to reconnect the Africans with their own "original" music by reinventing it on the basis of his knowledge of Western medieval music. Notwithstanding these minor points of criticism, Busse Berger has done a fantastic job of uncovering the fascinating interaction between the musical activities of missionaries, on the one hand, and the early 20th-century scholarship on and performance of medieval and non-European music, on the other. Even Christian missionaries with respect for African music, in which a deep connection with the communal, spiritual and religious was indeed often preserved, found many African rituals involving music and dancing abhorrent. [Extracted from the article]

Mr Baptiste was a musician living in late 17th-century Jamaica who composed music portraying African traditions as they were performed by enslaved musicians on the island. This article argues that Baptiste was probably a free person of colour and perhaps one of the earliest-known Black American composers to have published Western notation. His music was printed in Hans Sloane's 1707 travelogue and natural history of Jamaica. The article also addresses broader issues concerning the underrepresentation of marginalized performers in colonial music histories, with special attention to musical life in the early modern Caribbean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have often debated why so much energy was poured into efforts to reform working-class leisure and cultural pursuits in nineteenth-century Britain. This article uses a case-study of singing classes established in the early 1840s for industrial workers by local employers in the Manchester region to provide fresh answers to this question. It criticises a tendency to cast middle-class reformers as the primary agents of change in working-class leisure activities, arguing instead that many supposed innovations had been developed already by the Chartists, whose extensive transformation of working-class culture is increasingly recognised by scholars. The strike wave of 1842 permitted a dramatic manifestation of these cultural achievements, as the sounds of factory machinery were replaced by highly organised Chartist bands and choirs broadcasting radical messages. The establishment of a network of singing classes in the aftermath of the strikes was thus a belated attempt by the region's middle classes to counter the dangerous eloquence of Chartist sonic culture. However, the subjective nature of musical experience meant working-class participants could derive quite different meanings from their massed singing than those their middle-class benefactors intended. In short, this article seeks to ascribe the central place to the Chartists, rather than middle-class reformers, in our explanations of why working-class leisure pursuits changed in the way they did, and to contend that the early Victorian singing-class mania, far from representing the reconciliation of middle and working classes in a shared liberal culture, might just as easily have furthered a radical cultural agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the lenses of magic, witchcraft and superstition, this article explores Veneno es de amor la envidia (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Ms. 19254), a little-known zarzuela by Sebastián Durón and Antonio de Zamora. I consider this zarzuela within its wider cultural context, looking at changing attitudes towards magic and witchcraft in early modern Spain, as well as within the context of Zamora's literary output. I propose that Veneno es de amor la envidia was intended to attract large crowds of theatregoers fascinated with depictions of the supernatural while also helping to debunk beliefs in witchcraft through the use of humour and parody. An examination of this rather intriguing zarzuela contributes to our understanding of an often-overlooked corpus of theatrical music of the Baroque. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A ruler who was knowledgeable on musical matters could use music's power over the emotions to beneficial effect. 'Sounds of power: sonic court rituals in- and outside of Europe in the 15th-17th centuries', Institute of Musicology, University of Bern, 17-19 June 2021 This first international conference at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Bern since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic follows on the heels of two earlier, single-day workshops on a similar theme in September 2020 and February 2021 (the latter reported in the August 2021 issue of I Early Music i ). A good and knowledgeable ruler could therefore choose music carefully to maintain power and to guide his citizens. [Extracted from the article]

The 1880s saw a burgeoning of exhibitions of 'Women's Work' across the world. These events focused on the artistic and industrial abilities of women, signifying an unprecedented shift away from the emphasis usually placed on maleness and masculinized technology in contemporary exhibition culture. The first Exhibition, held in Bristol in 1885, included a musical novelty: a concert entirely of works composed by women. The next, in Sydney in 1888, included a whole series of such concerts. These concerts—containing works by Kate Loder, Clara Wieck, Fanny Hensel, Agnes Zimmermann, and Maude Valérie White—were extraordinarily well received, applauded in both concept and execution. Yet, their reception appears paradoxical against the contemporary critical climate. In both Britain and Australia, the 'question' of women composers was widely debated, and works met with condescension or hostility. By exploring the expectations surrounding displays of 'women's work', I argue that it was the exhibition context itself that influenced the reception of this music. While Exhibitions were conventionally seen as male-gendered events, 'Women's' Exhibitions allowed organizers to blur the distinctions between private and public space. Similarly, while women composers were criticized for their encroachment in the male concert sphere, these Exhibitions also blurred these boundaries and gave critics an appropriate 'feminine' framework through which to view and critique the works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay explores how the sagerin, known in English as a readeress, disappeared from Jewish musical history and also proposes a model for understanding the interrelation of men and women in Jewish musical leadership. Topics discussed include the gender-separated arrangement of orthodox Jewish worship, where men and women worshiped separately.

ISBN 978-1-51-282307-3.) I Eastern European Emigrants and the Internationalisation of 20th-Century Music Concepts. i Ed. by Anna Fortunova and Stefan Keym. The editors regret that material sent for review cannot be acknowledged or returned. i I Roberto Gerhard: Re-Appraising a Musical Visionary in Exile. i Ed. by Monty Adkins and Rachel E. Mann. ISBN 978-1-009-09806-9.) I Manuscripts, Music, Machaut: Essays in Honor of Lawrence Earp. i Ed. by Jared C. Hartt, Tamsyn Mahoney-Steel, and Benjamin Albritton. ISBN 978-1-19-069931-4.) I The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera. i Ed. by Jacqueline Waeber. [Extracted from the article]

To a large extent, the pre-war Germanophilia, Burrage argues, was replaced by a wartime Germanophobia that directly threatened the livelihood and security of Muck. In this sophisticated and thought-provoking monograph, the historian Melissa D. Burrage provides an insightful account of how the notable German-born conductor Karl Muck (1859-1940) - Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) from 1906 to 1908, and again from 1912 to 1918 - was mistreated, vilified, and witch-hunted in the United States at the time of the First World War. Through these accusations, Burrage closely examines how Muck became progressively agitated and bitter, and also disillusioned by the United States, his adopted homeland. [Extracted from the article]

There are several pages with various probable and improbable diseases and scientific evidence from the history of medicine and Noble's own investigations. As with other composers, Noble chronicles Beethoven's illnesses throughout life, including deafness,andtheninvestigateshislastillnessand cause of death. Noble suggests depressionand alcoholism as the possible cause for Sibelius's writer's block, and considers '[o]f controversial interest his hospitalisation', possibly for syphilis (p.55). [Extracted from the article]

This article explores early twentieth-century Swedish attitudes towards modernism. It uses as its focus Wilhelm Stenhammar's incidental music for Shakespeare's As You Like It, composed in 1920 for a production directed by Per Lindberg. It argues that by 1920, 'modernism' in Sweden was associated with particular styles that differed between disciplines. The term 'modern', however, had the same meaning across disciplines, and referred to cultural forms that aimed to reach a mass audience. As a collaborative form, theatre is particularly useful for exploring conflicting ideas about modernism as practitioners involved frequently held opposing views. This was the case here—Stenhammar and Lindberg had differing attitudes towards 'modernism', but were united by a common goal of creating 'modern' art. Through an investigation of the 1920 production, I argue that Stenhammar's music was central to the play's success, and was received as 'modern' in part because of its diatonic language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A newly discovered source for the text of the aria Fallax mundus (BuxWV 28) by Dieterich Buxtehude has brought to light an important connection between devotional texts, contemplative emblems and musical settings. The series of emblematic engravings Cor Iesv amanti sacrvm by Flemish engraver Antony II Wierix includes a Latin poem from which Buxtehude derived the text for Fallax mundus. Buxtehude’s most likely source was the 1627 devotional book Cor Deo devotum , which contained Wierix’s engravings. The poem shows the influence of Jesuit teachings and spiritual practices, although Buxtehude’s setting may suggest a more Lutheran reading of the text. These discoveries shed new light on Buxtehude’s piety and show that he moved in a milieu open to influences from Catholic piety. Furthermore they suggest new interpretations for his Latin sacred works such as Membra Jesu nostri (BuxWV 75) and Sicut Moses exaltavit serpentem (BuxWV 97) in relation to contemporary devotional images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New manuscripts of viola da gamba music by Carl Friedrich Abel (1723–87) have been found in Poland, in the Library of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, in a collection originating from the Maltzan family palace in Milicz (Poland). Two manuscripts, one of them partly autograph, transmit 29 pieces by Abel, or attributed to him based on unique source criticism and stylistical analysis, including 22 previously unknown. These are valuable sources, as they show previously undocumented practices relating to Abel’s work and its transmission: the use of a fragment from the Drexel Manuscript in another composition with basso accompaniment; the manuscript records of Six Easy Sonattas (London(?), 1772(?)); the unique example of a second autograph of a work; the gamba version of a cello composition; and the only known duo for two violas da gamba. Besides copies of short, conventional sonatas in the galant style, the Maltzan collection contains some of the most complex, challenging and virtuosic sonatas written by Abel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pierluigi Farnese (1503–47) was the 1st Duke of Parma and Piacenza (r.1545–7). His fortune heavily relied on the political and diplomatic ability of his father, Paul III (1468–1549). Pierluigi took an active and severe attitude towards local feudatories; as a result, he had many enemies and was assassinated in September 1547. While Pierluigi was unsuccessful as a ruler, he was aware of the impact of the arts for his political strategies: he collected artworks and tried to establish a musical household. This article presents previously unknown documents showing Pierluigi’s attempts to recruit musicians for Piacenza, including a travelling band from Brescia; a certain Girolamo Leone, presumably a singer of the Brescian cathedral; the Genoa musician ‘Jacomo tenorista’; and the Roman musician ‘Bolognia’, presumably Galeazzo Baldi, member of Paul III’s musica segreta. Pierluigi enlisted the help of Jean Michel, a French singer active in Ferrara, to look for singers there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interprets the long-recognized, but hitherto unidentified, heraldic description contained in Machaut’s ballade 30 (Pas de tor) against the background of his known authorial practices, spheres of activity and patterns of engagements. It suggests the description is of the arms of Lower Lusatia, which Machaut, as a result of his time in the service of the Bohemian King John of Luxembourg, knew both the geography of and the people involved in settling the status of these disputed lands. It suggests that the song was likely composed in May 1364 and handed to King Peter I of Cyprus as cultural ammunition for the latter’s trip to Prague in search of support for his crusading initiative. The article thus solves a longstanding riddle of Machaut scholarship while presenting the song within a practical, political landscape that far exceeds the composer’s physical residency in Reims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very little research has been undertaken into guitarmaking and playing in the Netherlands. Neither the 17th century nor the 18th has received much attention, though we know that the playing of guitars and similar instruments was an integral part of cosmopolitan cultural life. This article introduces a number of luthiers and their guitars--wire-strung and gut-strung--made in the Netherlands between c.1750 and 1800, a period when concert life began to flourish. In Amsterdam, Johann Swarts, Gosewijn Spijker and Benoit Joseph Boussu were active, while Johannes Cuijpers had his workshop in The Hague. Brief biographies of these makers are given, together with inventories of known instruments. The most remarkable find is undoubtedly the recently rediscovered large five-course guitar made by Gosewijn Spijker. Finally, there is a discussion of who may have bought these guitars--a Greek merchant's son, a French actress--and how the instruments would have been used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,-- / Tumultuous,--and, in chords that tenderest be, / He played an ancient ditty, long since mute ...'. These lines from The Eve of St Agnes, by John Keats, provide a reminder that the Romantic poets were fascinated by the lute. As if in response, around 1800 an instrument called 'lute' or 'modern lute' suddenly became fashionable. Most examples had an egg-shaped body, with ten single strings, and were built in London by craftsmen such as Buchinger, Barry and Harley. At the same time, older lutes from the 16th and 17th centuries were converted into 'modern lutes'. This article contributes to a rediscovery of these forgotten lutes and their music in the Regency period. It presents the first census of the nine extant instruments, surveys the original musical sources, and considers matters of playing technique and contemporary instruction books. A surprisingly rich repertory is revealed, for these lutes played arrangements of contemporary popular tunes and dances, but there were also newly composed sonatas, rondos and lute songs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Bathe's Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song (c.1596) and Thomas Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) describe a solmization system that is fixed and static, replacing the medieval hexachordal system that went back to Guido d'Arezzo. This approach became standard in the 17th century. My research demonstrates that the English shift from traditional hexachords to fixed scales was initiated a generation earlier in The Whole Booke of Psalmes. First printed in 1562, many editions of this psalter, beginning in 1569, featured a music typeface that contained solmization syllables, along with a new preface that explained their use. Thus the earliest documentation of fixed-scale solmization comes from Protestant religious reformers and the English Reformation's hymnal. I explain how The Whole Booke of Psalmes systematized the assignment of solmization syllables to absolute pitches, and I compare this system with continental hexachord theory, Bathe's and Morley's treatises, and four earlier Genevan music books dated 1550-62 which also printed solmization syllables. Finally, I suggest that fixed-scale solmization was a uniquely English Protestant innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The votive antiphon to the Trinity, Potencia patris, survives as a single voice part in the orphan partbook London, British Library, Add. Ms. 34191. Its unusual text shows that it was probably written during Henry VIII's 1513 invasion of France, most likely to celebrate the capture of Tournai in September of that year. Based on stylistic and biographical information it is also possible to attribute the antiphon to William Cornysh 'Junior', Henry's informator choristarum, who accompanied him on campaign in 1513. Cornysh is known to have written an antiphon with the text Altissimi potencia, which survives only as an entry in the index fragment Oxford, Merton College Library (pr. bk.) 62.f.8, and it is likely that this lost work can be identified with Potencia patris. This new identifi- cation has broad implications for our understanding both of Henry VIII's self-fashioning during his invasion of France, and of early Tudor musical style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interpretation of appoggiaturas or grace-notes in Classical and early Romantic music is much discussed and contested. This article concerns the appoggiatura in the music of Fernando Sor (1778-1839), a guitarist whose career unfolded in several countries, above all in France, where almost all his known guitar music was published. Although none of this music survives in autograph manuscripts, there are ample autographs of Sor's compositions for voice, piano or orchestra to examine his musical handwriting in general and the notation of appoggiaturas specifically. Notwithstanding inaccuracies and inconsistencies, the notation indicates that the written length of the appoggiatura is often a useful pointer to its approximate duration in performance. It also shows that Sor seems to have envisaged long appoggiaturas in far more situations than commonly considered today. This practice is supported by descriptions in a great number of method books, both for the guitar and other instruments, published in France during the early decades of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]