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In 1853 a writer for the London-based periodical Fraser's Magazine remarked that Berlioz's "heroic temperament" could be "read legibly in the noble style of his compositions. His own life forms to these works the most interesting accompaniment and commentary." The linking of life and work in Berlioz's case is nothing unusual. However, a particular set of circumstances unique to London meant that critics based inthat city persistently used Berlioz's biography to further their own agendas while also promoting his music. In this article, I argue that, when writing about Berlioz's London performances, critics employed biographical ideas and narratives that enabled them to use the composer as a means to shape local debates about the future of London's orchestral institutions: the Philharmonic Society and its latest "rival": the New Philharmonic Society. Biography proved a powerful rhetorical device from which Berlioz profited and is central to our understanding of his critical reception in London. It was used to introduce, to persuade, to simplify, to generate sympathy, admiration, and outrage. However, I reveal that in later visits biographical narratives overshadowed the coverage of Berlioz's music. In some articles, Berlioz was reduced to a rhetorical device to be employed to give strength to criticisms of either the old Philharmonic or the new, with the critic offering little insight into Berlioz's music. Biography had given Berlioz a foothold in musical London, but it could not win him the lasting success he craved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with the "open secret" of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears's relationship and continuing through debates over Handel's and Schubert's sexuality and analyses of Ethel Smyth's memoirs, biography has played a central role in the development of queer musicology. At the same time, life-writing's focus on extramusical details and engagement with difficultto- substantiate anecdotes and rumors often seem suspect to scholars. In the case of early-twentieth-century music research, however, these very gaps and ambiguities paradoxically offered some authors and readers at the time rare spaces for approaching questions of sexuality in music. Issues of subjectivity in instrumental music aligned well with rumors about autobiographical confession within Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique) for those who knew how to listen and read between the lines. This article considers the different ways in which the framing of biographical anecdotes and gossip in scholarship by music criticturned- amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson and Tchaikovsky scholar Rosa Newmarch allowed for queer readings of symphonic music. It evaluates Prime-Stevenson's discussions of musical biography and interpretation in The Intersexes (1908/9) and Newmarch's Tchaikovsky: His Life andWorks (1900), translation of Modest Tchaikovsky's biography, and article on the composer in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians to explore how they addressed potentially taboo topics, engaged with formal and informal sources of biographical knowledge (including one another's work), and found their scholarly voices in the absence of academic frameworks for addressing gender and sexuality. While their overt goals were quite different--Newmarch sought to dismiss "sensationalist" rumors about Tchaikovsky's death for a broad readership, while Prime-Stevenson used queer musical gossip as a primary source in his self-published history of homosexuality--both grappled with questions of what can and cannot be read into a composer's life and works and how to relate to possible queer meanings in symphonic music. The very aspects of biography that place it in a precarious position as scholarship ultimately reveal a great deal about the history of musicology and those who write it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very little critical attention has been directed toward biographical writings on Haydn and Mozart in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, following the first wave of work by Friedrich Schlichtegroll and Franz Niemetschek (for Mozart, 1793, 1798) and Georg August Griesinger and Albert Dies (for Haydn, 1809, 1810). Examining varied biographically orientedmaterials in books, short profiles, anecdotes, and fiction, this article establishes contrasting narratives for the two composers during this period: Mozart was regarded as thoroughly immersed in music from beginning to end, born into it as an infant prodigy and dying in the act of writing it for the Requiem, encapsulating a unified life and oeuvre; and Haydn embraced a rags-to-riches, triumph-overadversity story--poor at birth and in his youth but eventually feted as one of Western music's greatest figures--with full-fledged life-work alignment at death potentially compromised by a perceived decline in compositional powers toward the end. The article also traces influences of one narrative on the other, especially Mozart's on Haydn, including through accounts of Haydn's Creation and death. By explaining the diverging and converging narratives associated with Haydn and Mozart, I identify the second and third decades of the nineteenth century not as a protracted biographical cold spot but rather as a springboard and inspiration for future scholarly endeavor, including the serious, extended studies of Georg von Nissen, Alexandre Oulibicheff, and Otto Jahn (1828, 1843, and 1856 respectively). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

H. Lawrence Freeman's "Negro Jazz Grand Opera," Voodoo, was premiered in 1928 in Manhattan's Broadway district. Its reception bespoke competing, racially charged values that underpinned the idea of the "modern" in the 1920s. The white press critiqued the opera for its allegedly anxiety-ridden indebtedness to nineteenth-century European conventions, while the black press hailed it as the pathbreaking work of a "pioneer composer." Taking the reception history of Voodoo as a starting point, this article shows how Freeman's lifelong project, the creation of what he would call "Negro Grand Opera," mediated between disparate and sometimes apparently irreconcilable figurations of the modern that spanned the late nineteenth century through the interwar years: Wagnerism, uplift ideology, primitivism, and popular music (including, but not limited to, jazz). I focus on Freeman's inheritance of a worldview that could be called progressivist, evolutionist, or, 778 Journal of the American Musicological Society to borrow a term from Wilson Moses, civilizationist. I then trace the complex relationship between this mode of imagining modernity and subsequent versions of modernism that Freeman engaged with during the first decades of the twentieth century. Through readings of Freeman's aesthetic manifestos and his stylistically syncretic musical corpus I show how ideas about race inflected the process by which the qualitatively modern slips out of joint with temporal modernity. The most substantial musical analysis examines leitmotivic transformations that play out across Freeman's jazz opera American Romance (1924-29): lions become subways; Mississippi becomes New York; and jazz, like modernity itself, keeps metamorphosing. A concluding section considers a broader set of questions concerning the historiography of modernism and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways in which biographers mythologize their subjects' lives (and the way they mythologize their own lives) have long been a topic of research in life-writing. Even though several musicologists have identified mythologizing "motifs," the mythologizing function of "death" and "resurrection" remains under-theorized in relation to musical biography. Such motifs appear in biographies of Berlioz and Liszt written during their lifetimes, beginning with the earliest biographies of the composers, which were written by a friend, the music critic Joseph d'Ortigue. The meanings of these episodes changed when they appeared in auto/biographies written towards the end of their lives: Berlioz's Mémoires and Lina Ramann's Franz Liszt als Künstler und Mensch (the first "official" biography of Liszt, written partly under his guidance). In both of d'Ortigue's biographical sketches, "resurrection" is associated with the broader social regeneration taking place in Paris in the wake of the July 1830 Revolution, thereby magnifying the composers' importance. The ability to understand and conquer death is also positioned as an integral part of the composers' apprenticeships, further inflating and mythologizing their status as artists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's picture book biographies on composers and musicians can prompt powerful music learning experiences. Biography breaks are the reading aloud of a picture book biography and the questions or activities the teacher engages students in while and after reading the book. In the music classroom, biography breaks can be used with children of all ages to introduce students to composers, musicians, music elements and concepts, music vocabulary, music genres and styles. Biography breaks provide a groundwork for discussing the historical, social, and cultural context of music, as well as a catalyst for engaging students in meaningful music experiences creating, performing, responding to, and connecting with music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography of composer Robert Hall Elmore is presented. Topics discussed include his musical influences, his studying musical composition at the University of Pennsylvania and his preparation for the Carnegie Hall recital program. It also offers information on his music material collection called The Robert Hall Elmore Papers at the University of Pennsylvania.

This set of essays emerged from a symposium held at Smith College on the occasion of the world premiere of The Scarlet Professor, an opera based on events that took place near the Smith campus in 1960: the arrest and subsequent disgrace of Newton Arvin, eminent critic of American literature, and two colleagues for possession of "obscene" materials depicting nude and seminude male models. The cluster includes a Hawthorne-rich scene from the opera and essays by its composer and the author of the biography of Arvin upon which the opera was based. The brief scholarly essays that follow respond to the production, provide key historical context for the events and emotions depicted there, and reflect upon Arvin's significance as an interpreter of American literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

family in Hanover? The long-held assertion that Antonio Lotti was born in Hanover, because his father was Kapellmeister there at the time, can be easily refuted. Parish records provide details of Lotti's birth and baptism in Venice, and no evidence can be found of Antonio's father, Mattio Lotti, working in Hanover. The reason for the misunderstanding is explored, revealing that Mattio Lotti may have used the name Matthio Trento in Hanover. Documentary evidence also attests to Antonio Lotti's 'adoption' by Venetian nobility, and the existence of a brother, working as a violinist in Hanover and Dresden. Other long-standing biographical confusions about Antonio Lotti's wife, the soprano Santa Stella, are also clarified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach belongs among the few musicians who left a mark in the history of music well beyond his contributions as a famous virtuoso and a distinguished composer. As author of the earliest biography of his father, he significantly shaped the perception of J. S. Bach's life until the present day. His own autobiography of 1772 gives much insight into his art and contemporaneous musical life. His large music library and extensive collection of musician portraits opens a window on the composer's curatorial activities. Finally, the context of the double-choir Heilig Wq 217 sheds light on his promotion of religious concert music, his concern about his own posthumous legacy, and his original style with its impact on the music that would follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monteverdi’s Selva morale e[t] spirituale presents us with a number of intriguing bibliographical questions, of which the problem of the dual title pages in the Bologna exemplar—one dated 1640, the other 1641—is well known. This essay supports Jeffrey Kurtzman’s conclusion that the volume was actually published in 1641, after a delay. It also considers the anomalous structure of the tavole found at the end of the partbooks. Taken together with watermark evidence, these show that the first section of the book was printed later than the second. The most probable reason is that the music of the first section was still incomplete in 1640. This leads to reassessment of the dating of music in the first section, not least that of the great concertato Gloria a 7. The essay goes further by showing that the ‘1641’ title page was itself printed in 1640, and considers such other anomalies as why instrumental parts were published in place of the Alto and Basso secondo vocal parts for the first of the two Magnificat settings (SV 281); finally, an explanation is offered for the apparently rather clumsy typographical choices for the 1641 title. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jordaens's aim in inscribing three differing compositions of the proverb As the old sang, so pipe the young with the title of a victory song from the Southern Netherlands, Een Nieu Liedeken van Callo (1638), can only be understood in conjunction with a rejoinder ballad from the North (1644), thus forming a terminus post quem for these paintings. The converse use of a song underscores the topsy-turvy world which Jordaens emulates in this proverb which is intent on facilitating a predestination interpretation. Erasmus and his contemporaries exploited exempla contraria to great success but the ability of the public to correctly interpret this dangerously confusing teaching method waned irrevocably during the seventeenth century. This protected Jacob Jordaens from persecution in his day but also impairs our ability to appreciate him as a sharp-witted artist with an edge, exploiting confessional equivocal themes on personal and/or commercial grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

A biography of pianist, composer, music educator and teacher Wadym Kipa is presented. He was born on May 13, 1912, in Kyiv, Ukraine, and graduated from the Kharkiv Music School in Ukraine. He continued his studies at the Kharkiv Conservatory of Music and at the Kyiv Conservatory of Music, where he was later a faculty member. Kipa and his family left Europe in 1951 and moved to the United States. He died in New York on August 31, 1968.

Claudio Monteverdi's Il quarto libro de madrigali a cinque voci (1603) ends with a setting of 'Piagn'e sospira: e quand'i caldi raggi', a text from Tasso's Gerusalemme conquistata (1593). Nicea, a Muslim in love with a Christian, wanders through the forest carving her beloved's name in the trees, and weeps as she re-reads what she has scored in the bark. Monteverdi's Fourth Book of madrigals is an odd collection. Fifteen months before, the composer had been appointed maestro della musica to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua. However, instead of responding in what might seem the normal way - by printing something in the duke's honour - Monteverdi chose to dedicate a madrigal book to the Accademia degli Intrepidi of Ferrara. Even stranger is the fact that he makes no direct mention of what must have been uppermost in his mind, the recent attack on his madrigals by the Bolognese theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi. Artusi's diatribe against the moderns eventually forced the composer to come up with the defence of his 'second' practice. However, re-reading 'Piagn'e sospira'- as the text tells us to do - suggests that before Monteverdi put his theoretical brain in gear, he had already come up with a musical response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents brief biographies of composer Nino Rota and bass soloist, pedagogue and conductor Franco Petracchi. Topics covered include the educational and social background of the composer and the performer, their occupational achievements and performances, and their musical styles and various works.

James MacMillan was 50 years old on 16 July 2009 and his birthday was celebrated by musical institutions not just in Britain, but internationally. As a composer and conductor in residence for the BBC Philharmonic he led performances of his Symphony No.3: Silence and The World's Ransoming. The Royal Northern College of Music staged a three-day celebration of his work while The Sixteen toured his music under conductor Harry Christophers. His recent St John Passion was performed in Berlin and Amsterdam by the London Symphony Orchestra and in Rotterdam concerts of his music were given by the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra and the Hilliard Ensemble. The widespread regard for MacMillan's music evidenced by these performances is the culmination of a steady rise in popularity, undisputedly catalyzed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra première of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. In a 1993 Tempo article on MacMillan, music critic Stephen Johnson describes the premiere thus: ‘there have been warm receptions for other new works at Promenade Concerts, but the thunderous, ecstatic welcome given to James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the 1990 Proms was unprecedented’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the author's reflections on his career and biographical writings on the 19th-century Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. Commentary is offered describing how the author came to become a scholar specializing in the composer's life and works, highlighting numerous challenges and shortcomings which he had to overcome before successfully publishing his work. Accounts of his research and travels through Hungary and Austria in the 1970s for are also given. Comments regarding the composer's life are also provided.

The article presents a discussion on the approximate date range that 18th-century composer Niccolò Jommelli is believed to have worked at St. Peter's basilica in the Vatican City. The author focuses on Jommelli's church music compositions estimated to have been written during his employment at St. Peter's, explaining the difficulty of determining their exact date of composition. Particular attention is paid to chronological descriptions made by Jommelli's biographer Pietro Alfieri. The author also examines the connections between Jommelli's work and the church history developments of the 18th century.

The discovery that Handel began investing in South Sea Annuities five years earlier than previously believed (1723 rather than 1728) offers important new information about the composer’s investment practices and their financial outcomes. Further, renewed examination of the records at the Bank of England has permitted a better understanding of the importance of signed transfer forms as biographical documents and, in particular, provides new information about the distribution of Handel’s estate. Included are a diplomatic transcription of the newly identified account from this early period, biographical identification of persons named in the account, a financial accounting of Handel’s investments from 1723 to 1732, and photographic images of the account ledger and selected transfer forms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Up to now the Roman theologian Fortunato Santini (1778-1861) has been primary viewed as an important collector of music. His library, which was used by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Otto Nicolai and many more, is today stored in the Diözesanbibliothek Münster. Only little was known about Santinis numerous sacred and secular compositions. The article brings this field of activity into focus by looking at the context and reception. A characteristic of Santini is the reciprocation of his scopes (collector, arranger, composer, priest). Interestingly not only his teachers (Giuseppe Jannacconi and Giovanni Guidi) appraised his works, he also asked other musicians and musicologists (such as Giuseppe Baini, François-Joseph Fétis and Raphael Georg Kiesewetter) for advice. Santinis dedications emphasize his well-tended network of contacts (for example with the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin). With regard to the reception of Santinis compositions a divergence of contemporary and posthumous estimations is to state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the exhibition "Handel the Philanthropist" at the Foundling Museum in London, England in 2009.

The article discusses the relationship between exiled Polish poet Kazimierz Wierzyński and the Polish Institute of Arts and Science of America (PIASA, Polish: Polski Instytut Naukowy, PIN). The organization was created to allow exiled Polish scholars living in the U.S. to continue their work while away from Poland. The poet's experiences living in New York City are detailed, including his writing of the book "The Life and Death of Chopin," about the famed Polish composer Frederic Chopin. Celebrations sponsored by PIASA for Polish exiles and Polish Americans are described.

Together with Beethoven and Mozart, Mahler is one of the most analyzed composers in the history of music. The notes he wrote on his manuscripts, rich in extra-musical meaning, allowed the clinicians and musicologists to analyze both the man and the musician. The controversies built around his personality reached a level almost without precedent. The permanent conflict that one can feel in Mahler's music has been explained in terms of the struggle between his activity as a conductor and the necessity for creation. Furthermore, his music reflects the turbulent social-cultural environment typical for the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the tensions of his childhood and youth. Mahler began working on Das klagende Lied when he was still a student. The composer himself considered it as his opus 1. Indeed, in this work, one can find the roots to his later works that occupied the next thirty years of his career as a composer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination into the history of the 19th-century Austrian composer Ludwig van Beethoven, focusing on accounts of his relationship with his pupil the countess Julie Guicciardi. Details are given overviewing the documentation from Beethoven's letters and biographies regarding their romantic relationship, questioning established historical assumptions about the full nature of her emotional influence on the musician and on his compositions.

The article presents a profile of the late 19th-century American music critic Henry Edward Krehbiel and his contributions to the publication of a biography of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven by Alexander W. Thayer. A biographical profile of his life is given, highlighting his entry into the music world and his journalism career. Details are then given describing how he obtained the manuscripts and completed the work of Thayer's biography "Life of Beethoven."

The article focuses on "Wellington's Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria," opus 91, also known as "Wellington's Victory," composed following the Battle of Vitoria in 1813 during the Napoleonic Wars by Ludwig van Beethoven. Biographical details about Beethoven's career in Vienna, Austria are provided. Musical instrument inventor Johann Nepomuk Malzel met Beethoven and the two men worked to create a piece of battle music for Mazel's panharmonicon, a musical device created to sound like an entire orchestra was playing. The piece was first performed in Vienna, Austria at a benefit concert on December 8, 1813. A thematic analysis of "Wellington's Victory is presented.