Music and Letters - recent issues

Speculative 'Musica' and the Medieval University of Paris

Dyer, J. — 2009-04-29

During the early Middle Ages quadrivial musica (the study of abstract mathematical proportion) was part of the educational programme in the liberal arts; the fundamental text was Boethius’ De institutione musica. With the rise of the universities in the thirteenth century, the goals of education and the content of the curriculum changed dramatically. Aristotelian logic and natural science virtually extinguished interest in the quadrivium—and necessarily music—at the university level. An analysis of the curriculum, teaching methods, questiones disputate (a derivative of the university dispute), and student examination questions at the University of Paris reveals that music had no place in the official instructional programme of the University. A few sources, however, indicate that Boethius’ De institutione musica still commanded interest in some circles, particularly at Oxford and in Central Europe in the fourteenth century.

The Need for Latin Textual Scholarship in Renaissance Musicology

Verbeke, D. — 2009-04-29

Focusing on the need for a more thoughtful treatment of textual material in the study of music, this article pleads for a closer collaboration between Latinists and musicologists studying Renaissance music and literature. Familiarity with musical sources would introduce Latinists to new aspects of the classical tradition and a largely unknown corpus of Neo-Latin texts. Musicologists would benefit greatly from philological and literary competence when editing and interpreting Latin sources that pertain to the biography of Renaissance composers or the publication history of Renaissance music. The need for Latin textual scholarship is demonstrated through numerous examples taken from articles and monographs on sixteenth-century motet collections and from modern critical editions of the same collections. These examples argue for a more careful use of Latin sources, as well as for a change in editorial practice when preparing a critical edition of Renaissance music.

'Mutato semper habitu': Heinrich Schutz and the Culture of Rhetoric

Varwig, B. — 2009-04-29

This article proposes a fundamental reappraisal of the scope and significance of rhetoric in early seventeenth-century compositional theory and practice. Moving beyond the inherited conception of musical rhetoric as a hermeneutic tool to match musical gestures with specific affective meanings, it reconstructs the discipline as the dominant intellectual force it was, and situates early seventeenth-century German music and music theory within this wider cultural domain. The conceptual world of the German musica poetica theorists around 1600 was shaped in particular by rhetorical procedures for verbal composition first explored by Erasmus of Rotterdam, who defined and popularized pervasive creative paradigms of variation and amplification. Reading the compositional practice of Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries against the background of such an Erasmian procedural approach opens up fresh perspectives on the structural intricacies and expressive potency of this repertory.

Defining the Term 'Absolute Music' Historically

Pederson, S. — 2009-04-29

In his influential book The Idea of Absolute Music, Carl Dahlhaus claimed there was ‘a comprehensive concept of "absolute" music which reveals the latent unity of musical aesthetics in the nineteenth century’. However, a history of the term ‘absolute music’, as opposed to the concept, leads in different directions that disrupt that latent unity. A reinvestigation of some of the ground covered in Dahlhaus's book shows, first, that it is a myth that Hanslick championed the term. Absolute music emerged as a positive concept associated with Hanslick only around 1880, which is when it started being used to designate the opposite of programme music. I also present evidence that Wagner and Nietzsche did not use the term ‘absolute music’ in a positive sense. A metaphysical ‘absolute music’ is found primarily in the writings of August Halm and Ernst Kurth. These theorists developed esoteric theories centred on Bruckner's music as the most perfect embodiment of absolute music. Dahlhaus's account of the idea of absolute music as the key aesthetic concept of the nineteenth century relies heavily on the twentieth-century writings of Halm and Kurth; it was only at this point that the term began to be used in combination with the concept. The conclusion addresses the question of why Dahlhaus constructed a unified idea of absolute music. The development of Dahlhaus's thought is considered in the context of his position as a professor of music in West Berlin, waging an ideological battle against Marxist musicology and his East Berlin counterpart Georg Knepler.

The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe 1470-1530. By Rob C. Wegman

Perkins, L. L. — 2009-04-29

Sounding Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry, and Art in Renaissance France. By Carla Zecher

Perkins, L. L. — 2009-04-29

Cristobal de Morales. Sources, Influences, Reception. Ed. by Owen Rees and Bernadette Nelson.

Rodriguez-Garcia, E. — 2009-04-29

Devotional Music in the Iberian World, 1450-1800: The Villancico and Related Genres. Ed. by Tess Knighton and Alvaro Torrente.

Laird, P. R. — 2009-04-29

Chambonnieres: A Thematic Catalogue--The Complete Works of Jacques Champion de Chambonnieres (1601/02-1672). By Bruce Gustafson.

Ledbetter, D. — 2009-04-29

The Viola da Gamba Society Index of Manuscripts Containing Consort Music, Vol. 2. Compiled by Andrew Ashbee, Robert Thompson, and Jonathan Wainwright.

Pinto, D. — 2009-04-29

J. S. Bach's Concerted Ensemble Music: The Concerto. Ed. by Gregory Butler.

Yearsley, D. — 2009-04-29

Mozart's Viennese Instrumental Music. A Study of Stylistic Re-Invention. By Simon P. Keefe.

Rushton, J. — 2009-04-29

The Cambridge Companion to Haydn. Ed. by Caryl Clark.

Will, R. — 2009-04-29

Heinrich Heine and the Lied. By Susan Youens.

Glauert, A. — 2009-04-29

Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs. By Jon W. Finson.

Tunbridge, L. — 2009-04-29

Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-Century Music. By Michael P. Steinberg.

Tregear, P. — 2009-04-29

Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900-1945. By Karen Painter.

Attfield, N. — 2009-04-29

Jean Sibelius. Dagbok 1909-1944. Ed. by Fabian Dahlstrom. * Jean Sibelius: Poesie in der Luft. Studien zu Leben und Werke. By Tomi Makela. * Sibelius. By Andrew Barnett.

DMG, — 2009-04-29

Bartok and the Grotesque: Studies in Modernity, the Body, and Contradiction in Music. By Julie Brown.

Bayley, A. — 2009-04-29

Ligeti, Kurtag, and Hungarian Music during the Cold War. By Rachel Beckles Willson.

Bauer, A. — 2009-04-29

Sofia Gubaidulina: A Biography. By Michael Kurtz. Trans. by Christoph K. Lohmann and ed. by Malcolm Hamrick Brown.

Medic, I. — 2009-04-29

Messiaen Studies. Ed. by Robert Sholl.

Broad, S. — 2009-04-29

The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman's Film. By Heather Laing.

Citron, M. J. — 2009-04-29

Silence, Music, Silent Music. Ed. by Nicky Losseff and Jenny Doctor.

Waltham-Smith, N. — 2009-04-29

Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together. By Kay Dickinson.

Cenciarelli, C. — 2009-04-29

Music and Urban Geography. By Adam Krims.

Bohlman, P. V. — 2009-04-29

Notes to Contributors

2009-04-29

'Music & Letters' Awards

2009-04-29

Authors of Articles in this Issue

2009-04-29

Books Received

2009-04-29

Nigel Fortune (1924-2009)

2009-04-29

A Neglected Anthology of Sacred Vocal Music Dating from the Sixteenth Century

Charteris, R. — 2009-01-28

In the last four decades of the sixteenth century, a notable feature of printed anthologies of polyphonic vocal music was the proliferation of collections assembled and edited by individuals other than printers and publishers. This went hand in hand with naming the editors in the publications themselves, usually on the title pages. One such example is the anthology that is the subject of this article, Suavissimorum modulorum selectissimae cantiones sacrae ex praestantissimis quibusdam musicis collectae (Munich, 1590). All its pieces are anonymous and the editor, Stephan Schormann, is acknowledged on one of the title pages. The copy of this anthology in the British Library has largely been overlooked. It differs significantly from other extant copies since it includes contemporary ascriptions added by Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559–1625), the well-known composer and Kantor of St Anna in Augsburg. The identification of many of its works and concordances substantially augments our knowledge of its music and history.

Manuscript Publishing in the Commonwealth Period: A Neglected Source of Consort Music by Golding and Locke

Howard, A. — 2009-01-28

A previously unknown manuscript (shelfmark BRm630.85Go42) at the Henry Watson Music Library, Manchester, contains a number of pieces by the composer Sir Edward Golding together with a small collection from Matthew Locke's Little Consort. On the basis of the appearance of the copying and the presence of inscriptions apparently indicating price, the manuscript is identified as an example of a ‘manuscript publication’. The consequences of this hypothesis are explored throughout the article, both in order to elucidate the likely origins of the source and to evaluate its potential to increase our understanding of the wider phenomenon of manuscript publishing in mid-seventeenth-century England. Considerable attention is also devoted to establishing the identity of Sir Edward Golding (a composer who seems to have been misidentified in an earlier study), and to the analysis of the pieces from Locke's Little Consort, the texts of which shed new light on the history of this work.

Fauxbourdon in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: 'Le secours d'une douce harmonie'

Kauffman, D. — 2009-01-28

Numerous French treatises over several centuries have pointed to the use of fauxbourdon as a common and important method for the elaboration of liturgical chant. Although the term fauxbourdon has been closely identified with musical practices and compositions dating from the time of Du Fay, it continued to be used to describe a method of performing liturgical chant in France well into the twentieth century. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in particular, fauxbourdon was frequently referred to in treatises and accounts of chant performance, but the term itself was rarely described in any satisfying detail, making it difficult to know what the practice was actually like, and how it related to—or differed from—what we know about fauxbourdon's earliest forms. Fortunately, a number of printed and manuscript sources from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth century—including dictionaries, treatises, ceremonials, and collections of music—include examples of composed fauxbourdon settings. An examination of these reveals both general and specific information about the practice that on occasion conflicts with contemporary definitions and descriptions, but also reveals a certain range of variation in what was included within the purview of the term.

Tuning in and Dropping Out: The Disturbance of the Dutch Premiere of Stockhausen's Stimmung

Adlington, R. — 2009-01-28

The disruption of the Dutch premiere of Stockhausen's Stimmung in June 1969 has become an often-told aspect of the piece's early history, but existing accounts—including Stockhausen's own—significantly misrepresent the event. The performance was interrupted, not (as Stockhausen later claimed) by young, politically engaged composers such as Peter Schat and Louis Andriessen, but by a group of composition students who wished to ‘participate’ in the piece. In an impromptu debate following the aborted performance, Schat and Andriessen defended Stockhausen's right to have his music heard in silence. I interpret this clash of young Dutch musicians in terms of the sharp schism that emerged in 1969 between Amsterdam's thriving hippie counterculture, whose communal ‘happenings’ encouraged the dismantling of the performer–audience distinction, and the city's student movement, whose emphasis on political action found reflection in Schat's and Andriessen's growing interest in communism. It is clear, however, that Schat's and Andriessen's stance was also motivated by commitments to musical professionalism and to the ideology of musical progress, commitments that sat as uneasily with the musical preferences of the student movement as they did with the hippie counterculture.

Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema. Ed. by Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert.

Davison, A. — 2009-01-28

Performing Democracy: Bulgarian Music and Musicians in Transition. By Donna A. Buchanan.

Samson, J. — 2009-01-28

The Music of Mauricio Kagel. By Bjorn Heile.

Williams, A. — 2009-01-28

Living Electronic Music. By Simon Emmerson.

Clarke, M. — 2009-01-28

Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. By Robin Maconie.

Heile, B. — 2009-01-28

Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin. By Marina Frolova-Walker.

Fairclough, P. — 2009-01-28

The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity. By Alexandra Wilson.

Greenwald, H. — 2009-01-28

Elgar the Music Maker. By Diana McVeagh.

Harper-Scott, J. P. E. — 2009-01-28

Fashionable Acts: Opera and Elite Culture in London, 1780-1880. By Jennifer Hall-Witt.

Wilson, A. — 2009-01-28

Nadia Boulanger et Lili Boulanger: Temoignages et etudes. Ed. by Alexandra Laederich.

Potter, C. — 2009-01-28

Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy. By Jeremy Day-O'Connell.

Monelle, R. — 2009-01-28

Ohr und Auge -- Klang und Form: Facetten einer musikasthetischen Dichotomie bei Johann Gottfried Herder, Richard Wagner und Franz Schreker. By Arne Stollberg.

Morris, C. — 2009-01-28

Richard Wagner's Zurich: The Muse of Place. By Chris Walton.

Vazsonyi, N. — 2009-01-28

Smeleji a rozhodneji za ceskou hudbu! 'Spolecenske vedomi' ceske hudebni kultury 1945-1969 v zrcadle dobove hudebni publicistiky. By Petr Macek.

Tyrrell, J. — 2009-01-28

Anton von Webern. By Alain Galliari.

Whittall, A. — 2009-01-28

Invention musicale et ideologies 2: Mutations historiques et lectures critiques de la modernite. By Celestin Deliege.

Whittall, A. — 2009-01-28

The Memetics of Music: A Neo-Darwinian View of Musical Structure and Culture. By Steven Jan.

Leech-Wilkinson, D. — 2009-01-28

Layers of Musical Meaning. By Finn Egeland Hansen.

Gritten, A. — 2009-01-28

Diagnosing Genius: The Life and Death of Beethoven. By Francois Martin Mai.

Cooper, B. — 2009-01-28

W. A. Mozart. By Hermann Abert. Trans. by Stewart Spencer and ed. by Cliff Eisen.

Keefe, S. P. — 2009-01-28

A Briefe and Short Instruction of the Art of Musicke by Elway Bevin. Ed. by Denis Collins.

Hauge, P. — 2009-01-28

La Libreria de Canto de Organo: Creacion y pervivencia del repertorio del Renacimiento en la actividad musical de la catedral de Sevilla. By Juan Ruiz Jimenez.

Knighton, T. — 2009-01-28

Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125. By Susan Boynton.

Hornby, E. — 2009-01-28

Studies in Bibliography: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. Vol. 56 (2003-2004). Edited by David L. Vander Meulen.

Jones, P. W. — 2009-01-28

Correspondence: To the Editors of 'Music & Letters'

Hoban, W. — 2009-01-28

Notes to Contributors

2009-01-28

'Music & Letters' Awards

2009-01-28

Authors of Articles in this Issue

2009-01-28

Books Received

2009-01-28

Byrd's Patrons at Prayer

McCarthy, K. — 2008-10-23

We are fortunate to have a number of devotional manuscripts and commonplace books made by William Byrd's patrons. Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, to whom Byrd dedicated the Mass and Office Propers of the 1605 Gradualia, produced a large collection of pseudo-liturgical ‘offices’, a self-contained ritual universe that little resembled either the Roman or the Anglican rite. John, Lord Lumley, Elizabethan bibliophile and patron of Byrd's 1591 Cantiones sacrae, kept a pocket-sized devotional notebook featuring Savonarola's meditation Infelix ego, set to music by Byrd and published in the motet book dedicated to Lumley. Documents of this sort shed some new light on Byrd's Latin-texted music and its patrons, their preoccupations, and their often divided religious loyalties.

Blurring the Lines: 'Elizabeth Rogers hir Virginall Book' in Context

Bailey, C. — 2008-10-23

Evidence in Elizabeth Rogers hir virginal book suggests that Elizabeth Rogers herself received training in composition, transposition, and ornamentation—practices not heretofore associated with young women in England during the mid-seventeenth century. The manuscript also represents a trend towards blurring the line between professional and amateur sources: it is one of the earliest manuscripts in England that challenges modern assumptions about what constitutes an amateur's manuscript and what a professional's, and, by extension, what repertory belongs in a woman's manuscript. Elizabeth Rogers contains a diverse repertory that includes up-to-date foreign pieces, but not modern English music, characteristics that further mark it as atypical. Copied in the 1650s, the volume demonstrates a move towards a more current, competitive market in which, by the end of the century, amateur sources can no longer be easily distinguished from professional manuscripts.

Style and Politics in the Philips-Handel Ode for Queen Anne's Birthday, 1713

Winn, J. A. — 2008-10-23

Handel's ‘Serenata’ for the Birthday of Queen Anne (1713) poses serious challenges to historical scholarship. We are not certain that it was performed for the Queen, and the attribution of the text to the Whig poet Ambrose Philips rests on a marginal note written after Handel and Philips were both dead. The piece celebrates the Peace of Utrecht, and thus participates in various political discourses, but the motives of everyone involved—poet, composer, performers, patrons, and dedicatee—cannot be adequately described in merely partisan terms. Poets of all stripes were eager to celebrate the Peace at this time, and Handel, though aware that his German employer (later George I) opposed the Peace, celebrated it not only in this work but in the Utrecht Te Deum. Internal and external evidence supports the attribution of the text to Philips; the careful avoidance of mythological terms suggests that the Pastoral War involving Philips, Thomas Tickell, Joseph Addison, and Alexander Pope is a relevant context for this ode. For his own part, Handel took care to write music showcasing the English singers of the Chapel Royal and displaying his knowledge of English vocal traditions, though he also used female singers and some musical forms derived from his work in the Italian opera.

'Our true north': Walton's First Symphony, Sibelianism, and the Nationalization of Modernism in England

Harper-Scott, J. P. E. — 2008-10-23

The debt of Walton's First Symphony to Sibelian models of symphonic form is often acknowledged, but the debt's wider implications are seldom considered. The inter-war English idolization of Sibelius may help to explain why Walton should use characteristic Sibelian procedures such as rotational form, heavy dependence on pedal points for structural purposes, and focus on a sound-sheet or Klang—however individually Walton treats these devices—but it does not account for all that is interesting in this moment in British musical history. In this article a richer context is drawn by locating Walton's Sibelianism in a more general contemporary artistic concern with what Michael Saler calls ‘the myth of the North’: an inter-war emphasis on the industrialized north of England. This ‘myth’, a development of modernist preoccupations with the relationship between technology and humanity, is reflected both in what Jed Esty calls an ‘anthropological turn’ in writers such as Eliot and Woolf (a turn to a romantic nationalism), and in Heidegger's philosophy of art—connections that open up a range of ethical and political considerations. After presenting an analysis of the Sibelian technique of Walton's symphony alongside discussion of its thematic treatments of nation, cultural, and geographic environment, and the changing antagonisms of late modernism, this article reconsiders the historical significance of Walton's music, and reads it as a presentation of views on authentic community and the place of England in the twentieth century.

Sonata Principles

Riley, M. — 2008-10-23

Critical Musicology and the Responsibility of Response: Selected Essays. By Lawrence Kramer.

Solie, R. A. — 2008-10-23

Johann Georg Werdenstein (1542-1608): A Major Collector of Early Music Prints. By Richard Charteris.

Jones, P. W. — 2008-10-23

Leonardo Vinci e il suo tempo: Atti dei Convegni internazionali di studi (Reggio Calabria, 10-12 giugno 2002; 4-5 giugno 2004). Ed. by Gatetano Pitarresi.

Strohm, R. — 2008-10-23

Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd's Gradualia. By Kerry McCarthy.

Benham, H. — 2008-10-23

Music in Renaissance Florence: Studies and Documents. By Frank A. D'Accone.

Bujic, B. — 2008-10-23

Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples: Francesco Provenzale (1624-1704). By Dinko Fabris.

O'Regan, N. — 2008-10-23

Music in the Collective Experience in Sixteenth-Century Milan. By Christine Suzanne Getz.

Vavoulis, V. — 2008-10-23

Music and Theology: Essays in Honor of Robin A. Leaver. Edited by Daniel Zager.

Yearsley, D. — 2008-10-23

The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach, i: 1695-1717. Music to Delight the Spirit. By Richard D. P. Jones.

Rose, S. — 2008-10-23

The Cantatas of J. S. Bach. With their Librettos in German-English Parallel Text. By Alfred Durr; revised and translated by Richard D. P. Jones.

Dirst, M. — 2008-10-23

J. S. Bach: A Life in Music. By Peter Williams.

Butt, J. — 2008-10-23

Schubert in the European Imagination, i: The Romantic and Victorian Eras; ii: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. By Scott Messing.

Garratt, J. — 2008-10-23

Pleasure and Meaning in the Classical Symphony. By Melanie Lowe.

Sutcliffe, W. D. — 2008-10-23

Joseph Haydn. 6 String Quartets Opus 54/55. Full Score and Parts. Ed. by Simon Rowland-Jones * Joseph Haydn. 6 String Quartets Opus 64. Full Score and Parts. Ed. by Simon Rowland-Jones

Drabkin, W. — 2008-10-23

Vincent Novello (1781-1861): Music for the Masses. By Fiona M. Palmer.

McGuire, C. E. — 2008-10-23

Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera. By Philip Gossett.

Parr, S. M. — 2008-10-23

Johann Strauss: Leben und Werk in Briefen und Dokumenten, vol. 10: Erganzungen und Korrekturen, Register. Ed. by Franz Mailer.

Lamb, A. — 2008-10-23

Francois-Joseph Fetis, Correspondance. Compiled and Ed. by Robert Wangermee.

Murphy, K. — 2008-10-23

Helmholtz musicus: Die Objektivierung der Musik im 19. Jahrhundert durch Helmholtz' Lehre von den Tonvorstellungen. By Matthias Rieger.

Rehding, A. — 2008-10-23

Brahms and his World: A Biographical Dictionary. By Peter Clive.

Berry, P. B. — 2008-10-23

On Brahms and his Circle: Essays and Documentary Studies by Karl Geiringer. Revised and enlarged by George S. Bozarth.

Avins, S. — 2008-10-23

Wagner and the Art of the Theatre. By Patrick Carnegy.

Syer, K. R. — 2008-10-23

Lectures on Musical Life: William Sterndale Bennett. Ed. By Nicholas Temperley and Yunchung Yang

Zon, B. — 2008-10-23

Leoncavallo: Life and Works. By Konrad Dryden.

Wilson, A. — 2008-10-23

Edward Elgar and the Nostalgic Imagination. By Matthew Riley.

Allis, M. — 2008-10-23

The Mahler Family Letters. Ed., trans., and annotated by Stephen McClatchie.

Franklin, P. — 2008-10-23

Die Unordnung der Dinge: Das musikalische Groteske in der Wiener Moderne (1885-1914). By Federico Celestini.

Chadwick, N. — 2008-10-23

Why Classical Music still Matters. By Lawrence Kramer.

Dunsby, J. — 2008-10-23

Berio's Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis. Ed. by Janet K. Halfyard.

Whittall, A. — 2008-10-23

Olivier Messiaen: Music, Art and Literature. Ed. by Christopher Dingle and Nigel Simeone. * Olivier Messiaen: Oiseaux exotiques. By Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone.

Whittall, A. — 2008-10-23

Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds: Innovation and Tradition in Twentieth-Century American Music. Ed. by Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama.

Whittall, A. — 2008-10-23

All the Gods: Benjamin Britten's Night-piece in Context. By Christopher Wintle and ed. by Julian Littlewood.

Venn, E. — 2008-10-23

New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification. By Amy C. Beal.

Heile, B. — 2008-10-23

The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945-1980. By Gillian Mitchell.

Smith, G. E. — 2008-10-23

Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books. By David Whittle.

Martin, S. — 2008-10-23

Music Divided: Bartok's Legacy in Cold War Culture. By Danielle Fosler-Lussier.

Willson, R. B. — 2008-10-23

Correspondence: To the Editors of 'Music & Letters'

Charteris, R. — 2008-10-23

Recipients of 'Music & Letters' Awards

2008-10-23

Notes To Contributors

2008-10-23

'Music & Letters' Awards

2008-10-23

Authors of Articles In This Issue

2008-10-23

Books Received

2008-10-23