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The book "Seachanges. Music in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds, 1550–1800" by Kate van Orden explores the maritime history of music in various oceanic regions, particularly in the Mediterranean. It emphasizes the significance of musicians as examples of mobility, migration, and diaspora. The book takes a global approach to music history and employs ethnological concepts to challenge the dominance of written music historiography. It is divided into three parts, which focus on the Mediterranean, Italy, and the Spanish and French colonies. The review highlights the contributions of Kate van Orden, Theodora Psychoyou, and Francesco Spagnolo, who examine complex linguistic relationships and musical phenomena. However, it is noted that the Ottoman side is underrepresented in the book. The second part of the book delves into the importance of the Neapolitan school and the dissemination of Spanish music in Italy. It emphasizes that the migration of Neapolitan musicians was based not only on musical ambitions but also on social circumstances. Cory M. Cavito's contribution examines the myth of Spanish music in Italy and demonstrates that this myth was also prevalent in the Ottoman Empire. Emily Wilbourne sheds light on the history of a black singer in 17th-century Florentine music theater and suggests that he was most likely a slave. The third part of the book explores various aspects of music practice and reception in Central America and the Caribbean. Geoffrey Baker questions previous research on music practice in Latin America and criticizes the use of the term "mestizo musical culture." Philippe Canguilhem examines Guatemalan music manuscripts from the 16th century and identifies transcultural elements within them. Pedro Memelsdorf examines the reception of Nicolas Dalayrac's Opéra comique in Haiti, and Olivia Bloechl analyzes gender roles in Lully's Proserpine. The anthology provides a fascinating panorama and makes an important contribution to music historiography. [Extracted from the article]

Using a famous commercial shown on German-language television from the 1980s, this article analyses the media staging, reactivation and transformation of audio-visual images of Italy at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The case study operates at the intersection of music history, the advertising and insurance industries, mass media and global tourism. It interweaves musical, technological, socio-cultural and discursive perspectives. In doing so, it demonstrates how key acoustic motifs become nationally connoted carriers of meaning in the context of the cross-media production and dissemination of clichés relating to Italy in international everyday culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Italy, the counterculture of the Sixties lasted until 1979, when it perished in the clash between two paranoias: the Italian state's fear of terrorism and the radical social movements from which it arose, and the terrorists' fear of the state's authoritarianism. Popular musicians were trapped between these paranoias, and their music searches to escape from both while chronicling the closing of the space between them, the only space in which countercultural social and artistic experimentation could take place. This essay focuses on the Italian "international POPular group" Area, which acted, in opposition to the generalized paranoia of the period, as a switching station linking progressive rock, electronic music, free jazz, global indigenous music, Fluxus sound experiments and postmodernist poetics with anti-militarist, anti-racist, socialist-feminist politics independent of the existing political party system. To create those links, the band was compelled to subvert the conventions of pop music from within and to move beyond pop's traditional boundaries into unstructured improvisation and avant-garde formal exploration. Area singer Demetrio Stratos's death in 1979 coincided with the Italian state's final crackdown on terrorism and the counterculture and marked the end of the richest countercultural experiment on earth, which still has much to teach us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equestrian ballet was a spectacular genre of musical theater popular in the Baroque court. A phenomenon with military roots, the ballet communicated both the might and grace of its organizers, who often played starring roles. This essay explores the ballet’s centrality by tracing the itinerant opera singer and writer Margherita Costa’s use of the genre as a means of securing elite patronage: from an elegant manuscript libretto presented to Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici and later revised in print for Cardinal Jules Mazarin in Paris, to occasional poetry written for the Barberini in Rome, and even burlesque caricatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the theory of scholar Zaccaria Tevo on the connection between music and science. Topics discussed include brief background on Tevo, information on his composition "Il musico testore," and strategy Tevo follows in discussing the function of the vocal tract. It also addresses his discussion of acoustics, the vocal apparatus, and reasons behind Tevo's scientific leanings.

Monteverdi at the crossroads Fifty years ago, at the time of Monteverdi's quatercentenary in 1967, very little of his music had penetrated the consciousness of European and North American audiences. This began to change dramatically as the 20th century progressed; increasing numbers of performances, recordings and musicological studies in subsequent decades have changed Monteverdi's place in the present-day musical landscape. Musicians today are more than ever at ease with Monteverdi's music, approaching more confidently the composer's often fragmentary scores with a revised understanding of 'historically informed performance'. At the occasion of the composer's 450th anniversary, I take brief stock of current trends in the performance of Monteverdi, and identify the principal challenges faced both by scholars and by performers of the composer's music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a pressing need to document Monteverdi's Venetian period (1613-43) in greater depth. This task has long been impeded, however, by our haphazard grasp of the specific complexities of Venetian socio-cultural and musical contexts. By looking beyond St Mark's Basilica, the present article uncovers brief archival records often overlooked by music historians. These new documents may not add much to the known facts of Monteverdi's biography, but they do cast significant new light on the vast network of social relationships that Monteverdi developed during his Venetian years with fellow musicians and with higher-ranked patrons, not least in secular spheres and in the world of early 'public' opera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The annual report of the DHI Rome for 2021 describes the impact of the Corona pandemic on the institute's scientific activities and operations. Despite travel restrictions and limited space in archives and libraries, research successes were achieved, including the acquisition of research funds and the implementation of projects in collaboration with other institutions. The institute also focuses on the development of digital humanities and intensifies its efforts to reconceptualize research data management. Various events and conferences were held, some of them online due to Covid-related restrictions. There were personnel changes and various research projects were carried out, including on heraldry in Rome and papal politics in the 11th century. The DHI Rome also funds a digital edition of Gregorovius letters and has projects on the study of Euroscepticism, professional networks in rural regions, and the music history of Italy. Various events, activities, and publications were organized, including study courses, guided tours, and concerts. The institute's library has made progress in catalog migration and deepened cooperation with other libraries. Internships and scholarships were awarded, and the institute has improved its IT infrastructure and collaborated with other institutes. [Extracted from the article]

Many of the texts of these oral poets survive, often bearing intriguing traces of their oral origins, but what can we say about the ‘canta’ that all three terms share, except that the singing was often accompanied by the instrument of choice, thelira da braccio, and that the music so thoroughly inhabited the oral realm of these singer/poets that it is entirely lost to us? In fact, there is evidence that can be summoned to make informed speculation possible, and it is essential to try, for it is clear that musical delivery was an essential ingredient of thecanterino’s practice and popularity. In this article I approach the subject in several ways: the surviving archival records, which drop significant bits of information about the singing and playing of thecanterini; the evidence of thecantasi cometradition in Florence, which reveals the wide array of music (much traceable to surviving sources) that circulated orally in the city and that can be connected to some of the Florentinecanterini; the evidence of the vernacular memory treatises that can be linked to 15th-centurycanterini, the techniques of which suggest something about how the musical process of improvisation andrifacimentomight have worked; and finally what we know about the technical capabilities of thelira da braccio, including what kinds of music could have been played on it, and how it might have been deployed in performance. I will also attempt to address another knotty problem encountered in the documents related to these performers: the often interchangeable use of the verbs ‘cantare’ and ‘recitare’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses music history in England. Topics discussed include musicological scholarship, English music and European music. Other topics which includes monarchy and church, composer Henry Purcell and Toryhistories of England are also discussed. Further, Italian opera and composer Thomas Tudway are also mentioned.

Aida famously inaugurated the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1908, but the musical history of the city is also linked to two earlier productions of the piece: its debut in Cairo in 1871, and another legendary performance, in Rio de Janeiro in 1886. This article retraces the steps of five Italian musicians who played in the orchestras of the Cairo or Rio productions before moving to Buenos Aires, and thereby formed part of the vast Italian emigration to Argentina in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Once there, Pietro Melani, Tomaso Marenco, Giovanni Grazioso Panizza, Italo Casella and Ferruccio Cattelani radically transformed the concert life of the city through their musical activities, not least through their introduction of a wide range of orchestral and chamber music repertoire. By reconstructing their trajectories, I argue for a stronger focus on international networks in thinking about the history of Italian opera at this time and for a greater attention to the contributions of performers who would later fall into obscurity. In addition, I suggest that the insignificant attention given to such figures even in Argentinean narratives would seem to indicate the persistence of a historiography that plays down the contributions of European immigrants in the musical history of the city and the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information regarding the international musicological MusMig conference with the theme "Music Migration in the Early Modern Age: Centres and Peripheries-People, Works, Styles, Paths of Dissemination and Influence," held in Warsaw, Poland from May 6-7, 2016 is presented. Topics discussed include the influence of Italian musicians in the European countries, the work of foreign composers in Poland, and the importance of music libraries in preserving the music culture.

This article explores the relationship between politics, society and culture in Napoleonic Milan (1796–1814) on the one hand, and opera reviews published in the city’s periodical press at the time on the other. This relationship is worth discussing for two reasons: first, Milan under French rule constituted the earliest, embryonic instance of the modern city in Italy; second, it was there that for the first time in Italy operatic criticism shifted from an undivided focus on the performance, mostly treated as a social occasion, to a prominent concern for the work being performed, which became the object of lengthy critical scrutiny. The article focuses specifically on the function of the periodical press as a crucial link between the discourse of opera and that of the city, exploring the complex ways in which Milanese society, culture and ideology, especially as represented in the city’s newspapers, are connected to the epoch-making shift from performance to work in the opera reviews published there. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the life and works of composer Alfredo Casella who promoted music revolution in Italy during the 20th century. Various topics discussed include vitalism in the music from Paris, France, his music on Italy's fascism and anti-Semantic campaigns started against him in between 1935-1937.

The article discusses the life and work of the late Luigi Boccherini, an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained in the European musical centers. An overview on the relationship between Boccherini and Prussian heir Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm II which resulted to the composition of twenty-nine string quartets (G. 213-241) in 17th century, is provided. It also highlights the appointment of Boccherini as composer of our chamber during the king's tenure from 1786-1797.

Detailed payment records and notes preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze allow us to reconstruct the relationship of music and space in the Florentine church of Santissima Annunziata. In the late fifteenth century different musical styles and repertories came to define ritually the composite space of the church, one of the main houses belonging to the mendicant order of the Servants of Mary. This special role of music came into focus in the early 1470s and even more in the 1480s, when subsequent priors increased the musical activities, possibly to negotiate the new spatial features of the church after a consequential remodeling. Music thus helped organize key areas that had undergone architectural transformations, linking each part of the building to the specific rituals performed there through special sounds directed at the likely participants. The remodeling also involved a shift in the balance of power, with private patrons coming to control the virtual totality of the church. Music helped address this problem as well, by acoustically marking and reclaiming certain spaces as the friars' dedicated ritual sites, but also creating in its variety a nuanced representation of the community--both ordained and lay--that frequented the building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article includes summaries of the contributions made by renowned music scholars through the medium of literature such as Maria Teresa Afrini, Silvia Lazo, Stephen A. Bergquist and Simon Wyatt. The historical significances of the changes in musical art, literature and instruments from 16th century Europe are mentioned in detail focusing on Germany, Paris and Italy.

This article discusses the impact of Pierre Bourdieu's social theorising on two related fields of debate, namely research about the evaluative practices of cultural critics, and research about the artistic legitimation of popular culture. More specifically, the article argues that the concept of field (Bourdieu 1993, 1996) makes it possible to investigate the ways in which criticism, as a cultural category, is struggled over by competing groups of experts and audiences. In this respect, field theory helps addressing criticism as a field in itself, rather than as an uncontested and uniform cultural institution. The article will first contend that Bourdieu's attention to struggles over practices and classifications remains underappreciated in the sociological literature on critics. It will then argue that a field perspective may enhance the study of the institutional diversification of criticism within popular culture. This claim will be substantiated discussing some findings of the author's research about the rise of popular music criticism in 1970s Italy. The discussion will conclude considering the possibilities that field theory may open up for future research, particularly in relation to the impact of digital media on the institutions and practices of criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neither scholarship nor popular interest has neglected Arcangelo Corelli. His music is a favourite of many performers; references to his sonatas and concertos are ubiquitous across a wide spectrum of musicological literature. The rise of serious Corellian research on an international scale since the 1970s has given new breadth to several areas of enquiry, including sources, archival documents, reception and performance studies. And yet, despite the advances of modern Corellian scholarship, a number of historical and critical issues are still to be investigated. Especially important for our understanding of the Corelli phenomenon is to determine the nature of the original social and cultural conditions that made it possible. Recent writings have shown that posthumous interpretations of Corelli depended mainly on processes peculiar to 18th- rather than 17th-century musical cultures. This article reconsiders the wealth of evidence unearthed by historical research to pinpoint the geographical, political and economic locus of Corelli’s work. It argues that, notwithstanding his international success as a published composer and his later reputation as a standard-bearer for Italian music outside Italy, Corelli was in fact the product of a rather restricted though distinctive milieu in the Rome of his time. By sketching the specific events that led to Corelli’s extraordinary career as a specialized instrumentalist, the article shifts attention away from the composer’s position within vast schemes of music history and restores it instead to the original environment in which his musical activities took place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Born probably in Verona, Jacob Cervetto (c.1690–1783) was a leading performer on, and composer for, the cello in London during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. His career, while typical in some respects for an Italian musician resident in England, is unusual for the fact that he was Jewish by birth. Cervetto profited from this connection and from his extensive Continental links generally, although his acceptance into the mainstream of English musical life was swift and complete. The article focuses on the known events of Cervetto's life, making several revisions and additions to the received account. It pays special attention to the role played by Cervetto in the popularization of the cello as a solo instrument in England from the 1730s onwards and examines closely the subscription lists of his first two published collections in order to shed light on the social and musical networks underpinning his activity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses Italian musicologist Nino Pirrotta's ethnomusical vision of Italy's musical history. Topics covered include Italian music's emphasis on melody as seen in the tradition of Italian opera, theatrical performances furnished by musical genres throughout the late 15th and 16th centuries, the use of solo-singing to string accompaniment in madrigal comedy and the commedia dell'arte, and equivocation over the practice of polyphonic treatment of secular verse.

The article presents an analysis of the career and works of the 16th- and 17th-century Italian madrigal composer of Giovambattista Strozzi the Younger. Contextual information is given distinguishing several Strozzis who were prominent during the period. Subjects addressed include his professional life in Florence during the late 16th century, his relationship with and influence from Giovambattista Strozzi the Elder, and his style of engagement with the poetic texts of his songs.

This article examines a painting by Alessandro Piazza long taken as a document of performance practice in San Marco c.1690, with special emphasis on two balconies for performers in addition to those added by Jacopo Sansovino in his refashioning of the chancel of the chapel in the mid-16th century. Closer examination of the picture (and a currently untraceable variant) suggests that it may not be a reliable document of a particular occasion but rather a composite, in line with at least one other musical depiction by Piazza. The question of the date of the addition of the secondary balconies and their removal is also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1985, Albi Rosenthal reported his discovery of a printed libretto for the opera Andromeda, composed by Monteverdi for performance in Mantua in Carnival 1620. This libretto deserves a new examination for its dramatic content, its likely musical setting (now lost) and some fundamental questions of genre. Its patron, Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga, used the librettist Hercole Marliani to broker his self-fashioning by imitating both Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607), supported by Vincenzo's elder brother, and Arianna (1608), which in effect belonged to the prince's parents. Monteverdi was typically slow to produce the score. The customary explanation is his disenchantment with Mantua and his new duties at St Mark's, Venice. However, we now see that both the Gonzagas and Monteverdi used Andromeda, like others of his Mantuan-commissioned works, as a bargaining chip in a complex exchange of obligations and favours typical of the courtly world to which the composer still belonged. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two newly discovered manuscripts in the Biblioteca Estense provide an insight into convent culture in late sixteenth-century Italy. They are the work of Annalena Aldobrandini, a nun at the convent of Santo Spirito in Florence. Annalena's manuscript contains eight veglie intended for performance during Carnevale and the Calendimaggio. Striking detail is preserved in the instructions for instruments, music, staging and costumes. Subject matter ranges from intellectual debates about the sciences and the arts to an appreciation of religious commitment and the difficulties of maintaining moral rectitude as part of monastic life. There is a wealth of practical information regarding music in a little-known dramatic context as well as a unique exposition of the Divine Office as a musical, as well as a religious, experience. The veglie are testament to the creativity of the nuns, showing how they, like the Medici outside, used spectacle as a method of community bonding. Moreover, because they were transmitted in manuscript rather than in print, they are unmediated by any masculine agency. The importance of this manuscript to our better understanding of early modern monastic women, their attitudes to enclosure, education and the performing arts, and their interactions with the secular world cannot be overestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In adapting Rinuccini’s Dafne, German poet Martin Opitz (1597–1639) sought to establish a degree of cultural independence from his Italian model, both by developing a prosodic approach uniquely fitted to the German language and by subtly imbuing his text with a German moralistic hue. The later adaptation of Opitz’s libretto by two 17th-century Italians—Giovanni Andrea Bontempi and Marco Gioseppe Peranda—for the same Dresden court (though for a different Elector) that witnessed the 1627 premiere of Opitz and Heinrich Schütz’s Dafne thus offers important insights into both the desire for German cultural independence and the power of Italian influence to moderate such a desire. This article attempts to draw out some of the distinctive features of Opitz’s adaptation and then examine what Bontempi and Peranda retained, added and altered with respect to Opitz’s aims. Their opera points to changing tastes at the Dresden court under Johann Georg II, and, as a stylistic hybrid, also stands as an early exemplar of a particular line of development in the broader history of German opera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Claudio Monteverdi was commissioned by Alessandro Striggio in December 1616 to set to music a theatrical text by Scipione Agnelli, Le nozze di Tetide, the composer made trenchant criticisms of it on the grounds of its problematic staging, its unmusical qualities and its failure to rise to the dramatic level of his operas Orfeo (1607) and Arianna (1608). This much is well known. However, we have failed to understand the place of Le nozze di Tetide in the context of a single evening’s entertainment (a veglia) intended to mark the entrance into Mantua of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga’s new bride, Caterina de’ Medici (they were married in Florence in February 1617), and the circumstances that eventually led to it being dropped in favour of Santi Orlandi’s Gli amori di Aci e Galatea (performed in Mantua on 13 March). The Tetide affair also reveals Monteverdi’s use of high-level intermediariescum-brokers in his relations with Mantua, and his ongoing ties with the Gonzagas even after his dismissal from court service in the summer of 1612 and his subsequent move to St Mark’s, Venice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two leaves with polyphonic music were identified a few decades ago in San Domenico in Bologna, then disappeared, and only recently have some reproductions resurfaced so that their content can be now discussed in greater detail. Four Latin devotional motets, of which only one is complete, can be reconstructed; two of them are connected to specific feasts, St Thomas of Canterbury and the Assumption. Style, treatment of the texts, and notational peculiarities, together with the script and layout of the source, point to an English origin of the motets in the early part of the fourteenth century. The time when the leaves arrived in Bologna is unknown. However, the possibility that this music may have circulated in the city later in the fourteenth century cannot be ruled out entirely: besides San Domenico, a favourable context may have been the monastery of San Salvatore, known for its long-standing links with the community of English students in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the musical career of violinist Jean-Pierre Pagin. Particular focus is given to a 1750 incident in which he was hissed by the audience during a performance. According to the author, Pagin drew the crowd's ire by playing a new Italian style of music which was recognized as a threat to the cultural patrimony of France. Topics discussed include the Paris public concert series the Concert Spirituel, Pagin's mentor Guiseppe Tartini, and differences between French and Italian styles of music.

The article discusses the impact of copper engraving as a musical print technology on the toccatas of Italian keyboard music composer Girolamo Frescobaldi. It particularly focuses on Frescobaldi's toccata ottava and his rhythmic complexity. The author also comments on Seicento keyboard music and on the Baroque music style of moderni called seconda practica. Other topics discussed include the music printing technique of single-impression typography.

The article focuses on the 1890s Italian music press. It describes the expansion of the bourgeoisie during the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the development in Italy of a branch of criticism devoted to more serious types of music. It highlights the conflicting cultural visions and critical methods represented by the Italian music press of the 1890s. Also noted is the richness and variety of this body of writing as a historical resource.

The article discusses Italian music written by expatriates and exiles living in Paris, France during the 1830s and the way in which they may have influenced Italian politics through their compositions. Composers Agostino and Giovanni Ruffini were among the group of exiles in Paris. Italian poet Carlo Pepoli, who wrote librettos, was also part of the political active group of artists and the double entendres in his poetry are examined. Compositions by the composer Saverio Mercadante are discussed as is the presence, in many songs by a number of composers including Mercadante and composer Gioachino Rossini, of a character named Elvira.

The article focuses on the connection of sound epistemologies, repertoires of popular music, and ethnic difference on the seventeenth-century in Italy. It states that the analysis was derived on two scenes from the 1612 commedia dell'arte play entitled "Lo Schiavetto" (The Little Slave). It says that the embodiment and historical circumstances of the original performers were considered. It adds that the musical discussion concentrated on madrigal comedy genre and the work of Giulio Caccini.

The article presents a documentary history of clarinet in the Teatro San Carlo Opera orchestra in Naples, Italy in the late 18th century, specifically on the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It notes that his music established relevant reference on the contemporary cultivation of the instrument, its technical apparatus and refinement, creative potential and its utilization within the orchestra. The opera orchestra of the Tiatro di San Carlos is considered as the most important ensemble in the country. Two new clarinetists in the royal orchestra arrived during the 1779-1780 season. Speculations indicate that the original clarinetists may not have been as skilled as their new colleagues.

The article presents the early musical writings of Antonino Pirrotta in the U.S. and Italy. It notes that his critical writings of the early- to mid-1930s cover invaluable evidence of his evolving insight as essayist and as student of music and its history. He performed and made contributions to Palermitan musical life, introducing the new organ in the Church of Santa Maria di Gesù. He authored 26 signed, critical-journalistic pieces between December 22-23 and October 13, 1935. He also wrote the actual process of producing his reviews and other writings. His reports and reviews are about the cultural activities in Palermo in the early 1930s, depicting that the theatres and auditoria where they took place were an extension of noble palaces' salons.

This article discusses Audrey Ekdahl Davidson's efforts to transcribe the "Planctus Mariae," a medieval musical drama based on records of its performance in Cividale del Fruili, Italy during the fourteenth century that are now located in the Reale Museo Nazionale de Archeologica in Italy. Issues relating to the iconographic significance of stage directions taken from the transcript are discussed. Conflict between the agency of stage directors and the significance of recreating an authentic recreation of the original play are considered. Aesthetic issues including the incorporation of period practices of liturgy in the performance are considered. Controversies surrounding the historical use of instruments in the "Planctus Mariae" are considered.

The importance of the courts of northern Italy as the birthplace of the viol consort in the closing years of the 15th century has been well established since the 1980s, but until recently any performances of the repertory associated with the early viol consort have used instruments that date from considerably later than the 1490s and early 1500s. This article assesses the significance of two viols depicted in Lorenzo Costa's Madonna and Child enthroned with SS Augustine, Posidonius, John and Francis, a Bolognese altar- piece of 1497, as a source of information, by establishing Costa's relevance as a witness by locating his work historically and geographically in the same courtly circles that saw the initial rise of interest in the first viol consorts: those of the d'Estes of Ferrara, the Bentivoglio family in Bologna and the Gonzagas of Mantua. It investigates the instruments in the painting in relation to other documentary evidence concerning the earliest development of the viol consort, including Castiglione's Il libro del cortegiano, and suggests a close constructional connection between these particular viols and the lira da braccio. It goes on to evaluate the results of performing on a set of instruments constructed on the basis of this painting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It seems that some arias by Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel have passages that need to be played with rhythmic inequality. A typical case would be a slow tempo aria in C time where semiquaver dotting is already prevalent: questions arise when a motif written first in dotted semiquavers appears elsewhere without dotting. A common practice with both composers is to write all their instrumental parts with continuous dotting, while leaving their vocal parts undotted. This happens so frequently that unequal performance of voice parts in such cases becomes a serious option. This study, which treats 69 movements from 23 major works by the two composers, reveals close similarities in the way Scarlatti and Handel worked. Indeed, it appears that Handel may have borrowed some of his compositional procedures from his elder contemporary. The article prints detailed tables comparing notational and thematic features in the movements concerned, with special attention to discrepancies between the vocal and instrumental parts. The analysis is confined to movements in C and 3/8, where dotting regularly invades the semiquaver diminutions. This new information could affect our overall view of inégal performance in this period, for Italian-style music of the late Baroque is normally held to be free of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 350th anniversary of the birth of Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726) is a stimulus for a reassessment of the grands motets of the most influential composer for the chapel of Louis XIV and Louis XV after the court moved to Versailles in 1682. Lalande's interest in Italian music, notably that of Corelli, and his passion for continuous revision, are noted in the context of other, Parisian centres of interest in Italian style. Extracts from Lalande's late motets illustrate how ultramontane influences allied to formal, harmonic and contrapuntal skills of a high order produced works which were to dominate the repertory both of the chapel and the Paris Concert spirituel for some 50 years after the composer's death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTContemporary press reports of two important stagings of grand op?rain Bologna ? Rossini?s Guillaume Tell(as Rodolfo di Sterlinga) in 1840 and the Italian premi?re of Verdi?s Don Carlosin 1867 ? shed light on some intriguing details of the beginning and culmination of the genre?s reception in Italy. Through the prism of local civic pride, they illuminate not only the national standing of the composers in question and the state of regional operatic production, but also the political issues of the day as they impinged ? frequently in unexpected ways ? on then-current debates about musical style and genre. In particular, when read alongside the pronouncements of Angelo Mariani (conductor in Bologna from 1860) and, above all, Verdi, they reveal that the role, provenance and relative status of the works? visual aspect (apparently so integral to the development of grand op?ra) figured surprisingly importantly in the complicated and often contradictory discourse on unity in the nation at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay presents an in-depth analysis of the printing and publishing practices of 16th century Italy, particularly focusing on the Roman Catholic mass chanting element of the Gradual. The history of choral choir book publishing in the era is overviewed. The sundry and subtle variations undergone by the style in printed editions throughout the century is examined. The author supports the understanding that music was very rigidly adhered to at the time.

The righoletto was a type of round dance current in Florence and its surrounding countryside in the late 14th and 15th centuries. It was above all a dance accompanied by song, one in which all the dancers sang the refrain, and a soloist sang the stanzas. Twelve "canzone a righolett"o have been identified in literary sources, together with three closely related works also appropriate to accompany the dance. The lyrics occupy a medium or lower poetic register; they range from moralizing texts to ribald narratives. Despite its country origins, the righoletto and its "canzone" were shared across social classes, largely via oral transmission. One "canzona a righoletto" survives with its music, the lauda "In su quell'alto monte." Another, the satiric "Non ti fidare che oggi è sì pocha fé," has been reconstructed from its model in the Squarcialupi Codex. The righoletto thus offers valuable glimpses of a vanished form of vernacular culture in late medieval Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]