Early Music History is devoted to the study of music from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. The scope is exceptionally broad and includes manuscript studies, textual criticism, iconography, studies of the relationship between words and music, and the relationship between music and society. Articles in volume 19 include: Ritual and Ceremony in the Spanish Royal Chapel, c. 1559-c. 1561; Urban Minstrels in Late Medieval Southern France; Mapping the Soundscapes: Church Music in English Towns 1450-1550; A New Look at Old-Roman Chant.

Music at German Courts serves to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of eighteenth-century German court music establishments without losing sight of what these Kapellen had in common. What was musical life at German courts really like during the eighteenth century? Were musical ensembles as diverse as the Holy Roman Empire's kaleidoscopic political landscape? Through a series of individual case studies contributed by leading scholars from Germany, Poland, the United States, Canada, and Australia, this book investigates the realities of musical life at fifteen German courts of varied size (ranging from kingdoms to principalities), religious denomination, and geographical location. Significant shifts that occurred in the artistic priorities of each court are presented through a series of "snapshots"- in effect "core sample" years - which highlight both individualand shared patterns of development and decline. What emerges from the wealth of primary source material examined in this volume is an in-depth picture of music-making within the daily life of individual courts, featuring acast of music directors, instrumentalists, and vocalists, together with numerous support staff drawn from across Europe. Music at German Courts serves to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of eighteenth-century German court music establishments without losing sight of what these Kapellen had in common. SAMANTHA OWENS is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. BARBARA M. REUL is Associate Professor of Musicology at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada. JANICE B. STOCKIGT is a Principal Fellow of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Contributors: DIETER KIRSCH, URSULA KRAMER, MICHAEL MAUL, MARY OLESKIEWICZ, SAMANTHA OWENS, RASHID-S. PEGAH, BAERBEL PELKER, BARBARA M. REUL, WOLFGANG RUF, BERT SIEGMUND, JANICE B. STOCKIGT, MICHAEL TALBOT, RUEDIGER THOMSEN-FUERST, ALINA ZORAWSKA-WITKOWSKA, STEVEN ZOHN

One evening, journalist Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Cello Suites" and began an epic quest that would unravel three centuries of intrigue, politics, and passion. Winner of the Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction and the McAuslan First Book Prize, "The Cello Suites" weaves together three dramatic narratives: the disappearance of Bach's manuscript in the eighteenth century; Pablo Casals's discovery and popularization of the music in Spain in the late-nineteenth century; and Siblin's infatuation with the suites in the present day. The search led Siblin to Barcelona, where Casals, just thirteen and in possession of his first cello, roamed the backstreets with his father in search of sheet music and found Bach's lost suites tucked in a dark corner of a store. Casals played them every day for twelve years before finally performing them in public. Siblin pursues the mysteries that continue to haunt this music more than 250 years after its composer's death: Why did Bach compose the suites for the cello, then considered a lowly instrument? What happened to the original manuscript? A seamless blend of biography and music history, "The Cello Suites" is a true-life journey of discovery, fueled by the power of these musical masterpieces.

This Catalogue provides scholars and performers with a survey of the breadth and variety of the repertoire of the composer whom Christoph Wolff describes as "one of the most seminal and influential musicians of the pre-Bach generation in Germany." Pachelbel composed the majority of his 527 works for keyboard instruments, as well as choral, vocal, and chamber music. The Catalogue presents incipits for each that can be identified. The list of works is intended to determine the totality of the corpus and knowledge about it, to determine the best means of identifying each work, and to settle problems of identity among similarly titled works. An essay on authorities examines the controversies of authenticity of Pachelbel manuscripts. Liberally footnoted and meticulously compiled, the Catalogue is invaluable to those familiar with Pachelbel's compositions and will create new interest.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach provides an indispensable introduction to the Bach research of the past thirty-fifty years. It is not a lexicon providing information on all the major aspects of Bach's life and work, such as the Oxford Composer Companion: J. S. Bach. Nor is it an entry-level research tool aimed at those making a beginning of such studies. The valuable essays presented here are designed for the next level of Bach research and are aimed at masters and doctoral students, as well as others interested in coming to terms with the current state of Bach research. Each author covers three aspects within their specific subject area; firstly, to describe the results of research over the past thirty-fifty years, concentrating on the most significant and controversial, such as: the debate over Smend's NBA edition of the B minor Mass; Blume's conclusions with regard to Bach's religion in the wake of the 'new' chronology; Rifkin's one-to-a-vocal-part interpretation; the rediscovery of the Berlin Singakademie manuscripts in Kiev; the discovery of hitherto unknown manuscripts and documents and the re-evaluation of previously known sources. Secondly, each author provides a critical analysis of current research being undertaken that is exploring new aspects, reinterpreting earlier assumptions, and/or opening-up new methodologies. For example, Martin W. B. Jarvis has suggested that Anna Magdalena Bach composed the cello suites and contributed to other works of her husband - another controversial hypothesis, whose newly proposed forensic methodology requires investigation. On the other hand, research into Bach's knowledge of the Lutheran chorale tradition is currently underway, which is likely to shed more light on the composer's choices and usage of this tradition. Thirdly, each author identifies areas that are still in need of investigation and research.

The composition of the solo concerto studied as an evolving debate (rather than a static technique), and for its stylistic features. The solo concerto, a vast and important repertory of the early to mid eighteenth century, is known generally only through a dozen concertos by Vivaldi and a handful of works by Albinoni and Marcello. The authors aim to bring thisrepertory to greater prominence and have, since 1995, been involved in a research programme of scoring and analysing over nine hundred concertos, representing nearly the entire repertory available in early prints and manuscripts.Drawing on this research, they present a detailed study and analysis of the first-movement ritornello form, the central concept that enabled composers to develop musical thinking on a large scale. Their approach is firstly to present the ritornello form as a rhetorical argument, a musical process that dynamically unfolds in time; and secondly to challenge notions of a linear stylistic development from baroque to classical, instead discovering composers trying out different options, which might themselves become norms against which new experiments could be made. SIMON McVEIGH is Professor of Music, Goldsmiths College, University of London; JEHOASH HIRSHBERG is Professor in the Musicology Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In considering the role of practical music in education this book explores the art of performance in Germany during the Baroque period. The author examines the large number of surviving treatises and instruction manuals used in the Lutheran schools during the period 1530-1800 and builds up a picture of the function and status of music in both school and church. This understanding of music as a functional art--musica practica--in turn gives us insight into contemporary performance of the sacred work of Praetorius, SchÜtz, Buxtehude or Bach.

In the last ten years or so an interest in 'authenticity' has reached a wide public. Many of the best-selling records of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart are those in which period techniques and period instruments are used. There is however a danger that new 'authentic' dogmas of style and interpretation will come to replace the anachronistic dogmas of the late romantic tradition. 'The search for an 'authentic' interpretation', writes Peter le Huray in his opening chapter, 'is not the search for a single hard and fast answer, but for a range of possibilities from which to make performing decisions.' This book introduces the performer to the problems that must be faced when preparing an 'authentic' interpretation. It does so by focusing on nine representative and well-known works from the Baroque and Classical periods, defining some of the more important questions that the performer and listener should ask, and suggesting fruitful lines of enquiry. It is essential reading and reference material for player, student and listener alike.

This is the first comprehensive assessment of J. S. Bach’s use of articulation marks (i.e. slurs and dots) in the large body of primary sources. Dr Butt analyses the role of such markings within the compositional process, how they relate to the norms of articulation of the period, and how they might assist us in a deeper understanding and evaluation of Bach’s style. With its extensive catalogue of the most common slurring patterns based on a study of over 100 concerted vocal works, this book is invaluable both for performers on all baroque instruments, and for scholars with an interest in Bach’s style and source studies. It also contributes to our perception of Bach’s position in music history: the purpose of music in the Lutheran Germany of Bach’s time and its rhetorical power; the close relationship between composer and performer within the context of ‘practical’ music; and the functions and development of notation.

Ian Spink, a leading authority on 17th-century English music, has carried out a remarkable new investigation of the musical sources of the Restoration period, and of the archives of every cathedral and choral foundation. For the first time, perhaps, the true character and shape of this period of musical history is revealed, taking in the work of the great men of the age, including Purcell, Locke, and Handel, and many lesser masters such as Humfrey, Blow, Clarke, Weldon, and Croft.

Music in the Galant Style is an authoritative and readily understandable study of the core compositional style of the eighteenth century. Gjerdingen adopts a unique approach, based on a massive but little-known corpus of pedagogical workbooks used by the most influential teachers of the century, the Italian partimenti. He has brought this vital repository of compositional methods into confrontation with a set of schemata distilled from an enormous body of eighteenth-century music, much of it known only to specialists, formative of the "galant style."

Music history was radically influenced by the rapid rise of opera in the 17th century--an era when many musical traditions died and others were created in response to new social functions.

Analysing over 100 recordings from 1945-1975, this book examines twentieth-century baroque performance practice as evinced in all the commercially available recordings of J.S. Bach's Passions, Brandenburg Concertos and Goldberg Variations. Dorottya Fabian presents a qualitative, style-orientated history of the early music movement in its formative years through a comparison of the performance style heard in these recordings with the scholarly literature on Bach performance practice. Issues explored in the book include the availability of resources, balance, tempo, dynamics, ornamentation, rhythm and articulation. During the decades following the Second World War, the early music movement was more concerned with the revival of repertoire than with the revival of performance style which meant that its characteristics and achievements differed essentially from those of the later 1970s and 1980s. Period practice techniques were not practised even by ensembles using eighteenth-century instruments. Yet, as this survey reveals, several recordings of the period provide unexpectedly stylish interpretations using metre and pulse to punctuate the music. Such metric performance and appropriate articulation helped to clarify structure and texture and assisted in the creation of a musical discourse - the pre-eminent goal of baroque compositions.

In the years following the Act of Uniformity in 1549, musicians seemed to thrive on the challenge of the New Prayer Book, and the successive reigns of Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I bought a rich and varied repertory of vernacular church music. Peter Le Huray traces these developments in great detail, drawing on many contemporary sources to illuminate the music and its social and religious background.

**WINNER of Presto Books' Best Composer Biography** NINE WORKS OF BEETHOVEN, NINE WINDOWS INTO THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF A MUSICAL GENIUS. 'We are doubly blessed that Beethoven should have led such an extraordinary life. Laura has combined the two - the genius of his music and the richness of his experiences - to shine a revealing light on our greatest composer' John Humphrys _________________________ Ludwig van Beethoven: to some, simply the greatest ever composer of Western classical music. Yet his life remains shrouded in myths. In Beethoven, Oxford professor Laura Tunbridge cuts through the noise. With each chapter focusing on a period of his life, piece of music and revealing theme - from family to friends, from heroism to liberty - she provides a rich insight into the man and the music. Revealing a wealth of never-before-seen material, this tour de force is a compelling, accessible portrayal of one of the world's most creative minds and it will transform how you listen for ever. _________________________ 'Tunbridge has come up with the seemingly impossible: a new way of approaching Beethoven's life and music . . . profoundly original and hugely readable' John Suchet, author Beethoven: The Man Revealed 'This well researched and accessible book is a must read for all who seek to know more about the flesh and blood tangible Beethoven.' John Clubbe, author of Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary 'This book is really wonderful! ... However many books on Beethoven you own, find the space for one more. This one' Stephen Hough, pianist, composer, writer 'In a year when everyone's looking for a new take on Beethoven, Laura Tunbridge has found nine. Fresh and engaging' Norman Lebrecht, author of Genius and Anxiety 'Remarkable . . . she captures the essence of his genius and character. I'll always want to keep it in easy reach' Julia Boyd, author of Travellers in the third Reich

A fully updated edition of the leading reference work on musical key characteristics during the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. This is a revised second edition of Dr. Steblin's important work on key characteristics, first published in 1983 by UMI Research Press and re-issued by the University of Rochester Press in 1996. The revision has been limited to athorough correction and update of the material in the first edition, so as to not disrupt the content and organization, for which the book has been praised as a significant and noteworthy reference for both scholars and research students alike. The book discusses the extra-musical meanings associated with various musical keys by ancient Greek and medieval-renaissance theorists and in particular composers and writers on music in the Baroque, Classical,and early Romantic periods. Chapters focus on Mattheson's extensive key descriptions from 1713, the Rameau-Rousseau and Marpurg-Kirnberger controversies regarding unequal versus equal temperaments, and C.F.D. Schubart's influential list based on the sharp-flat [bright-dark] principle of key-distinctions. Rita Katherine Steblin is a world-renowned music scholar, living and working in Vienna.

The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age chronicles the career of the most significant castrato of the second half of the eighteenth-century. Through a coincidence of time and place, Gaetano Guadagni was on the forefront of the heroic opera reform, and many forward-thinking composers of the age created roles for him. Author Patricia Howard reveals that Guadagni may have been the only singer of the time fully able to understand the demands and opportunities of this reform, as well to possess the intelligence and self-knowledge to realize that it suited his skills, limitations and temperament perfectly-making him the first castrato to embrace the concepts of modern singing. The first full-length biography of this outstanding singer, The Modern Castrato illuminates the everyday lives of eighteenth-century singers while spotlighting the historic high points of the century. Most famous for his creation of the role of Orpheus in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, his career ranged widely and brought him into contact with many progressives theorists and composers such as Traetta, Jommelli, and Bertoni. Howard's focus on the development of Guadagni's career pauses on essential, related topics along the way, such as the castrato in society, the eighteenth-century revolution in acting, and the remarkable evidence for Guadagni's marionette theater. Howard also assesses Guadagni's surviving compositions, which give new insight into the quality and character of his voice as well as his technical and expressive abilities. The Modern Castrato is an engaging narrative that will prove essential reading for opera lovers and scholars of eighteenth-century music.

This work includes a book and 4 CDs. This is the publication in the Handel festival year 2009! Georg Friedrich Handel is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished baroque composers. Over the centuries, his works have always ranked very highly in popularity ratings. Whether it is the "Water Music" or his "Messiah", Handel has set the benchmark in all categories of music. In this "earBOOK", author Detmar Huchting presents the biography of this great composer. Music CDs: This work contains four CDs that offer a representative cross-section of Handel's creative works. Renowned artists like Peter Schreier, Theo Adam or Reiner Susz and the orchestra as well as the chamber orchestra 'Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach' guarantee top-class performances.

Masque and Opera in England, 1656-1688 presents a comprehensive study of the development of court masque and through-composed opera in England from the mid-1650s to the Revolution of 1688-89. In seeking to address the problem of generic categorization within a highly fragmentary corpus for which a limited amount of documentation survives, Walkling argues that our understanding of the distinctions between masque and opera must be premised upon a thorough knowledge of theatrical context and performance circumstances. Using extensive archival and literary evidence, detailed textual readings, rigorous tabular analysis, and meticulous collation of bibliographical and musical sources, this interdisciplinary study offers a host of new insights into a body of work that has long been of interest to musicologists, theatre historians, literary scholars and historians of Restoration court and political culture, but which has hitherto been imperfectly understood. A companion volume will explore the phenomenon of "dramatick opera" and its precursors on London's public stages between the early 1660s and the first decade of the eighteenth century.

Rolland's biography attempts to provide an overview of Handel's life and works from his early lessons in music to the classical context in which he is commonly placed. Originally published in English in 1916, Hull's translation gives an insight into biographical facts and the musical pieces composed by Handel including his operas, oratorios and chamber music. This title will be of interest to students of music and musical history.

Evidence indicates that the concertos of Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn etc were performed as chamber music, not the full orchestral works commonly assumed. The concertos of Vivaldi, Bach, Handel and their contemporaries are some of the most popular, and the most frequently performed, pieces of classical music; and the assumption has always been they were full orchestral works. This book takes issue with this orthodox opinion to argue quite the reverse: that contemporaries regarded the concerto as chamber music. The author surveys the evidence, from surviving printed and manuscript performance material, from concerts throughout Europe between 1685 and 1750 (the heyday of the concerto), demonstrating that concertos were nearly always played one-to-a-part at that time. He makes a particularly close study of the scoring of the bass line,discussing the question of what instruments were most appropriate and what was used when. The late Dr RICHARD MAUNDER was Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.

It brings together a substantial group of essays by an international team of scholars on a wide range of aspects of Rameau's operas. The individual essays are informed by a variety of disciplines or sub-disciplines - literature, archival studies, musical analysis, gender studies, ballet and choreography, dramaturgy and staging. The contents are addressed to a wide readership, including not only scholars but also practical musicians, stage directors, dancers and choreographers.

In the early eighteenth century, the benefit performance became an essential component of commercial music-making in Britain. Benefits, adapted from the spoken theatre, provided a new model from which instrumentalists, singers, and composers could reap financial and professional rewards. Benefits could be given as theatre pieces, concerts, or opera performances for the benefit of individual performers; or in aid of specific organizations. The benefit changed Britain's musico-theatrical landscape during this time and these special performances became a prototype for similar types of events in other European and American cities. Indeed, the charity benefit became a musical phenomenon in its own right, leading, for example, to the lasting success of Handel's Messiah. By examining benefits from a musical perspective - including performers, audiences, and institutions - the twelve chapters in this collection present the first study of the various ways in which music became associated with the benefit system in eighteenth-century Britain.

The fundamental changes that resulted in the development of the Baroque style around the turn of the seventeenth century also had a profound effect on music theory. Music Theory in Seventeenth-Century England explores these changes, concentrating specifically on English writings because of their emphasis on practical application and consequent ready rejection of the obsolete. This allows for a detailed and comprehensive commentary on how treatises reflect musical developments during the period.

Through hundreds of letters, family papers, anecdotes, and records, the Bach Reader established a new approach to biography by offering original documents in impeccable translations. In The New Bach Reader, Christoph Wolff has incorporated numerous facsimiles and added many newly discovered items, reflecting the current state of scholarship about the composer's life and music. The readings in this volume provide an accurate and vivid picture of Bach's world and of his far-reaching influence.