In considering the role of practical music in education, this book attempts to define 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 'Latin' schools during the period 1530-1800 and builds up a picture of the function and status of music in both school and church. The understanding, gained through these educational texts, of music as a functional art - musica practica - in turn gives us insight into the thoughts of the contemporary performer and how he might have performed the sacred work of Praetorius, Schutz, Buxtehude or Bach. For all those interested in historical performance this book provides valuable information on the growing science of performance practice and the development of a conscious awareness of style and idiom in this period.

Traditional musicology has tended to see the Spanish eighteenth century as a period of decline, but this 1998 volume shows it to be rich in interest and achievement. Covering stage genres, orchestral and instrumental music and vocal music (both sacred and secular), it brings together the results of research on such topics as opera, musical instruments, the secular cantata and the villancico and challenges received ideas about how Italian and Austrian music of the period influenced (or was opposed by) Spanish composers and theorists. Two final chapters outline the presence of Spanish musical sources in the New World.

This 1995 volume brings together essays on J. S. Bach and members of his family by a distinguished group of scholars. The essays address Bach's compositions, his knowledge of the musical past, his study of contemporaries, and the cultivation of his own music by later generations. The studies draw on source criticism, musical analysis, religious and social context, performance practice and reception history - a broad range of techniques and issues in Bach scholarship. The international contributors include both established scholars and newer voices in Bach studies. This volume will be indispensable for any future work on the Musical Offering, St Matthew Passion, Italian Concerto, on Bach's musical connections with his sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann and on many other topics in Bach research.

This study is a 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.

In 1947 the theologian and musicologist Friedrich Smend published a study which claimed that J. S. Bach regularly employed the natural-order number alphabet (A=1 to Z=24) in his works. Smend provided historical evidence and music examples to support his theory which demonstrated that by this means Bach incorporated significant words into his music, and provided himself with a symbolic compositional scheme. Since then many people have taken up Smend's theory, interpreting numbers of bars and notes in Bach scores according to the natural-order alphabet. By presenting a thorough survey of different number alphabets and their uses in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany, Dr Tatlow investigates the plausibility of Smend's claims. Her new evidence fundamentally challenges Smend's conclusions and the book sounds a note of caution to all who continue to use his number-alphabet theory. Dr Tatlow's painstaking research will fascinate all those with an interest in the music of J. S. Bach and German Baroque culture, and will be of particular importance for music historians and analysts.

Bach, like Shakespeare, is known largely by his works, exceptional in quantity as well as quality, and only a few original documents convey any idea of his life and character. Peter Williams's 2003 look at Bach's biography asks many questions about the so-called evidence. What was he like as a young man, as a father, as an ageing church servant? What were his preoccupations? What music did he know and how did he compose and perform such an amazing amount of music? Was he a disappointed man? Reading the available documentation critically, especially from the viewpoint of a performer, and going back to the first substantial 'biography' of Bach, namely his Obituary, Williams suggests new interpretations of the composer's life and his work. In addition, he asks if our understanding of Bach has been hindered by the unremitting deference displayed towards him since his death.

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. The journal gives preference to studies pursuing interdisciplinary approaches and to those developing new methodological ideas.

Bach's spectacular Goldberg Variations represent a high point in the repertory of keyboard music, particularly for the harpsichord. This book takes a detailed look at how these variations originated, especially in relation to all Bach's ClavierÜbung volumes and late keyboard works, what their exceptionally intricate plan is, what kind of impact they have had, and how their mysterious beauty has been created. This guide to what was at the time the largest and most carefully conceived single work of keyboard music will appeal to students, performers and listeners.

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.

This book is the most authoritative and up-to-date source of quick reference on the Baroque composer and theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) This book is the most authoritative and up-to-date source of quick reference on the Baroque composer and theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), covering every significant area of his life and creative activity. In particular,the dictionary and work-list provide the reader with easy access to a wealth of cross-referenced material. The dictionary highlights recent discoveries and developments, and corrects a number of errors and misunderstandings. It includes entries on institutions, places, individuals, genres, instruments, technical terms, iconography, editions, specific works and publications, and caters for the fact that some users will be at least as interested in Rameau'stheoretical writings as in his life and music. Performers too are well served by the range of entries, many of which illuminate aspects of Rameau's notation and performance practice that can prove puzzling to the non-specialist. The biographical chapter not only provides relevant factual information but also draws attention to significant patterns in Rameau's life and work. This book counters the widespread perception of the composer as a dry, irascible, unsociable individual, revealing him in a far more sympathetic light by giving due weight to hitherto little-known information. GRAHAM SADLER is Professor Emeritus at the University of Hull and Research Professor at Birmingham Conservatoire. He is known internationally as an authority on French music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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 this vivid portrait, Bruce Wood illuminates the sometimes shadowy figure of Henry Purcell, richly evoking the atmosphere of 17th-century England - full of intrigues and plots. By interweaving the events during an unparalleled period of social and political change with the life and music of Purcell, Wood creates an account of this elusive English genius that is hard to put down.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Victoria's Requiem is among the best-loved and most-performed musical works of the Renaissance, and is often held to be 'a Requiem for an age', representing the summation of golden-age Spanish polyphony. Yet it has been the focus of surprisingly little research. Owen Rees's multifaceted study brings together the historical and ritual contexts for the work's genesis, the first detailed musical analysis of the Requiem itself, and the long story of its circulation and reception. Victoria composed this music in 1603 for the exequies of Maria of Austria, and oversaw its publication two years later. A rich variety of contemporary documentation allows these events - and the nature of music in Habsburg exequies - to be reconstructed vividly. Rees then locates Victoria's music within the context of a vast international repertory of Requiems, much of it previously unstudied, and identifies the techniques which render this work so powerfully distinctive and coherent.

The sublime - that elusive encounter with overwhelming height, power or limits - has been associated with music from the early-modern rise of interest in the Longinian sublime to its saturation of European culture in the later nineteenth century and beyond. This volume offers a historically situated study of the relationship between music, sound and the sublime. Together, the authors distinguish between the different aesthetics of production, representation and effect, while understanding these as often mutually reinforcing approaches. They demonstrate music's strength in playing out the sublime as transfer, transport and transmission of power, allied to the persistent theme of destruction, deaths and endings. The volume opens up two avenues for further research suggested by the adjective 'sonorous': a wider spectrum of sounds heard as sublime, and (especially for those outside musicology) a more multifaceted idea of music as a cultural practice that shares boundaries with other sounding phenomena.

Presupposing no specialist musical knowledge, this book offers a fresh perspective on the dramatic role of music in the plays of Shakespeare and his early seventeenth-century contemporaries. Simon Smith argues that many plays used music as a dramatic tool, inviting culturally familiar responses to music from playgoers. Music cues regularly encouraged audiences to listen, look, imagine or remember at dramatically critical moments, shaping meaning in plays from The Winter's Tale to A Game at Chess, and making theatregoers active and playful participants in playhouse performance. Drawing upon sensory studies, theatre history, material texts, musicology and close reading, Smith argues for the importance of music in familiar and less well-known plays including Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, The Revenger's Tragedy, Sophonisba, The Spanish Gypsy and A Woman Killed With Kindness.

This stimulating guide will help students and their teachers to achieve stylish performances of music of the Baroque period. Individual chapters from leading experts focus on historical background, notation and interpretation, and sources and editions, presenting the latest thinking on performance in a clear, helpful and practical way. There are also dedicated chapters of specialist advice for keyboard, string and wind players, and singers, plus a recommended playlist of illustrative, authoritative recordings. Fully illustrated throughout with many music examples, facsimiles and pictures, this is a valuable resource for students of the Baroque period which will also add to the knowledge and understanding of amateur and professional musicians.

Of all the biggest-name composers, Handel probably wrote the most truly great music that no one knows about. This book takes the curious listener through his entire output, from his earliest works in Italy, through his more than 40 operas, and including the famous English oratorios on which his reputation largely rests. Along the way it examines his orchestral music, the pieces he wrote for England s lavish royal ceremonies, and his surprisingly limited production of sacred music. Just as important, the book surveys and recommends recordings of all of the music discussed, so that listeners can acquire a music collection of whatever depth suits them best, while the included CD features top-notch recordings from the Harmonia Mundi label of a wide range of Handel s music in all of the major media in which he worked, both vocal and instrumental. Few composers cared more than Handel about pleasing his listeners and creating a body of work that was both entertaining and fun. It s time to blow away the Victorian cobwebs that have dogged his reputation, and discover just how much there is to enjoy.

The life and career of George Frideric Handel, one of the most frequently performed composers from the Baroque period, are copiously and intricately documented through a huge variety of contemporary sources. This multi-volume major publication is the most up-to-date and comprehensive collection of these documents. Presented chronologically in their original languages with English translations and with commentaries incorporating the results of recent research, the documents provide an essential and accessible resource for anyone interested in Handel and his music. This volume begins with Handel's move to the Covent Garden theatre, during the period of his competition with the Opera of the Nobility, and ends with his season of oratorio performances in Dublin. These years saw the composition of Italian operas including Ariodante, Alcina and Serse but also of the major English works Alexander's Feast, Saul and Messiah.

One of Europe's foremost experts on early guitar music explores this little-known but richly rewarding repertoire. In the seventeenth century, like today, the guitar was often used for chord strumming ("battuto" in Italian) in songs and popular dance genres, such as the ciaccona or sarabanda. In the golden age of the baroque guitar, Italy gave rise to a unique solo repertoire, in which chord strumming and lute-like plucked ("pizzicato") styles were mixed. Italian Guitar Music of the Seventeenth Century: Battuto and Pizzicato explores this little-known repertoire, providing a historical background and examining particular performance issues. The book is accompanied by audio examples on a companion website. Lex Eisenhardt is one of Europe's foremost experts on early guitar. He teaches both classical guitar and historical plucked instruments at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. He has produced a number of highly acclaimed CD recordings, and has given concerts and masterclasses in Europe, the United States, and Australia.