Music & Letters articles from February 1995

Music & Letters archives from February 1995

Music and the Quadrivium in early Tudor England. (basis of the medieval educational system)
February 1, 1995... We musicians proudly assert the venerability of our subject by pointing to its inclusion within the medieval Quadrivium, the four mathematical subjects which together with the three expressive subjects made up the seven liberal arts and...

The 'sonata da camera' before Corelli: a renewed search. (Italian instrumental ensemble music; Archangelo Corelli)
February 1, 1995... Before 1675, the specific labels 'sonata da camera' and 'sonata da chiesa' were not very common in volumes of instrumental ensemble music printed in Italy.(1) The term 'sonata', used more often without its modifiers, usually referred to an...

The Paris Opera chorus during the time of Rameau. (Academie Royale de Musique; Jean Philippe Rameau)
February 1, 1995... Some of the most profoundly touching moments in Rameau's tragedies en musique are phrases sung by the chorus as they respond to an unexpected event: the grief-laden downward appoggiatura of 'Hippolyte n'est plus' and the exquisite chromaticism...

'A Survivor from Warsaw' as personal parable. (composition by Arnold Schoenberg)
February 1, 1995... ARNOLD SCHOENBERG'S A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46, is undoubtedly one of his most immediately powerful expressions and, in terms of public acceptance, one of the more successful of his later works. Widely and justifiably viewed as a fitting...

A note on Stephen Storace and Michael Kelly. (composer; tenor)
February 1, 1995... On Tuesday 20 February 1787 in Vienna, the composer Stephen Storace was arrested for drunken brawling at a Carnival ball. So writes Michael Kelly, tenor and raconteur, in his Reminiscences of 1826, written with the help of Theodore Hook and...

A letter from John Danby found. (composer)
February 1, 1995... A letter written by the glee composer John Danby (1756/7-98) has recently come to light in the possession of a descendant of his, Anthony Nixon.(1) It adds a little colour to the brief and bare published details of Danby's life. The letter...

Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris.
February 1, 1995... St Victor, the Augustinian abbey founded by William of Champeaux in 1108, enjoys a reputation among theologians for having introduced a new type of piety to northern Europe. Its central figures, above all the German-born Hugh (d. 1141), devised...

La sequenza medievale: atti del convegno internazionale, Milano 7-8 aprile 1984.
February 1, 1995... It goes without saying that a conference on the medieval sequence, held in Milan as part of a festival entitled 'Musica e poesia a San Maurizio', should include discussion of sequences from Italy, or rather those examples of the form found in...

Mensuration and Proportion Signs: Origins and Evolution.
February 1, 1995... Mensural practice in the music of the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries holds the same considerable interest for music historians and performers today as it evidently did for musicians then. The attraction is to a subject that is complex,...

'A Musical Place of the First Quality': a History of Institutional Music-Making in York, c.1550-1990.
February 1, 1995... As a chorister and former suborganist at Leeds Parish Church, I have for most of my life been aware of the intense but mostly good-natured rivalry that has existed between the choir there and that at York Minster. Sir Edward Bairstow, who...

Music in English Children's Drama of the Later Renaissance.
February 1, 1995... The place of children's drama in the history of the English stage has long been recognized by literary historians, but the musical component of these 'choirboy plays' has attracted the attention of musical scholars only since the beginning of...

Monteverdi's Tonal Language.
February 1, 1995... Those seeking to interpret the 'tonal' language of the transitional period between modality and tonality in general, and of Claudio Monteverdi in particular, face fundamental methodological problems. Music theory c. 1600 simply does not provide...

Agostino Agazzari and Music at Siena Cathedral, 1597-1641.
February 1, 1995... The writing of music history depends on a knowledge of both the particular and the general. Music historians have sometimes been criticized for paying too much attention to the former; but without the information it provides, it is impossible...

The Late Baroque Era: From the 1680s to 1740.
February 1, 1995... Music history without music examples! I can remember a time when the thought was abhorrent and, to someone raised in the British tradition, suggested the foreign writer on music who knew all about Hegel and Voltaire but could not tell a German...

Georg Philipp Telemann: Autographe und Abschriften Kataloge.
February 1, 1995... Telemann studies have been developing strongly in recent years. In addition to a dramatic increase in the number of articles, monographs and dissertations devoted to Telemann's music, the thematic catalogue has been virtually completed, the...

Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment.
February 1, 1995... The recently renewed interest in the work of Rameau has resulted in the publication of a series of studies over the past decade that provide a new basis for re-evaluation of his production. That his writings have attracted the attention of...

Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762): Part 1, Life and Works; Part 2, Thematic Catalogue.
February 1, 1995... Francesco Geminiani has not been particularly well$served by musicologists. Until the present volume appeared, those curious about the composer or his works had to rely on articles from the 1930s and earlier, or on isolated passages from more...

Metastasio, l' "Olimpiade" e l'opera del Settecento.
February 1, 1995... As everybody knows, Metastasio wrote a great many dramas, making him an obvious candidate for critical study. Several writers have contented themselves with studying one item only, either to compare different musical settings, as Helga Luhning...

Diva panthera: musica e musicisti al servizio dello stato lucchese.
February 1, 1995... This volume is divided between an analytic, narrative history (91 pages) and documentary appendices (65 pages), the remainder comprising a list of sources, the bibliographical references, and indexes by category (names, places, titles and...

Les Grands Castrats napolitains a Venise au XVIII siecle.
February 1, 1995... Naples overtook Venice in the course of the eighteenth century as the chief fount of Italian music, in particular of Italian opera; that made it in the eyes of many (outside France) the leading creative centre in Europe. Accounts of the change...

The Pleasures and Perils of Genius: Mostly Mozart.
February 1, 1995... This curiously titled book is one of the least satisfactory contributions to the 1991 Mozart bicentenary to have appeared in print. It is the outcome of a conference held in San Francisco during that year, and consists of thirteen papers...

Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, x: Hefte 114-127.
February 1, 1995... This tenth volume of transcriptions from Beethoven's conversation books is the penultimate in the series, and covers the period from about 7 July to 12 December 1826. The editorship is no longer under the direction of Karl-Heinz Kohler and...

Schubert: 'Die schone Mullerin.'
February 1, 1995... With this book, Professor Youens completes her critical examination of the two great Schubert song cycles. She brings to the task a detailed knowledge of the social and cultural background (the reader may remember her essay on the origins of...

Tchaikovsky Remembered.
February 1, 1995... The efforts of Tchaikovsky's acquaintances to record their memories of him graced periodicals and produced books for years after the composer's death, and were enriched in the Soviet era by reminiscences solicited from persons who had yet to...

Ole Bull: Norway's Romantic Musician and Cosmopolitan Patriot.
February 1, 1995... Finn Benestad and Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe are the joint authors of a magnificent study of Grieg, Mennesket og kunstneren (Oslo, 1980), and editors of several volumes in the Grieg Gesamtausgabe, whose board they chair. The present study of the...

Janacek: vita, opere, scritti.
February 1, 1995... For us Smetana was much more important! And Dvorak, how good he was! Janacek was just a lunatic! My husband used to say that even his pupils couldn't understand a word of his composition lessons. He wasn't a normal man. Disarmingly, on the...

Intimate Letters: Leos Janacek to Kamila Stosslova.
February 1, 1995... Dear Madam Accept these few roses as a token of my unbounded esteem for you. You are so lovely in character and appearance that in your company one's spirits are lifted. It is with these words, written by the composer on 16 July 1917, that...

Josef Suk: tematicky katalog.
February 1, 1995... The one thing that makers of thematic catalogues generally agree on is that the quoted themes and the pieces they are said to come from should match. To do otherwise is to create as much havoc as changing the directions of road signs in time of...

Deodat de Severac: Ecrits sur la musique.
February 1, 1995... Severac (1872-1921) was not a very prolific writer: there are barely 50 pages of articles in this collection, but they are well worth reading, since they present an angle on French culture in crisis from several points of view. First, there was...

Alban Berg: Musik als Autobiographie.
February 1, 1995... This book falls into three unequal parts. The first consists of short essays on various aspects of Berg's personality (irony, literary tastes, views of women, nature etc.); the second comprises similar essays on some of Berg's musical...

A Stranger Here Myself: Kurt Weill Studien.
February 1, 1995... Success can dull the appetite for posthumous rewards. In 1940 a very successful Kurt Weill observed, 'I write for today. I don't give a damn about writing for posterity' (William G. King, 'Composer for the Theater - Kurt Weill Talks about...

Adorno's Aesthetics of Music.
February 1, 1995... As the first book-length study of Adorno's aesthetics of music to appear in English, Max Paddison's book carries a heavy responsibility, which it fulfils: its systematic and thorough approach equips it to become the standard introduction to the...

Studi su Luigi Dallapiccola: un seminario.
February 1, 1995... As its subtitle implies, this well-produced little book contains the belatedly published fruits of a series of seminars for third-year students which took place at Rome University during the academic year 1986-7 under the guidance of Pierluigi...

Composition in Retrospect.
February 1, 1995... There can be little doubt that John Cage's most controversial act as a composer was his adoption of chance techniques in 1951. It was the musical issue over which he and Pierre Boulez came to disagree most fundamentally and is thus central to...

Stockhausen: a Biography.
February 1, 1995... 'Biography' is perhaps too ambitious a description of this interesting but inconclusive compilation of notes and interviews (I reviewed the German edition (1988) in Music & Letters, lxx (1989), 441-2). The author has tracked down and...

Sondheim's Broadway Musicals.
February 1, 1995... With this book Stephen Banfield offers the first comprehensive appraisal of Stephen Sondheim's musical theatre, closely analysing and amply illustrating the music by informed criticism. The heart of the book lies in the ten critical essays...

Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship.
February 1, 1995... The aims of a specifically 'critical' musicology are now clear: it seeks to extend the boundaries of conventional musicology's discourse and subject matter while systematically questioning the methods and values of those analysts and historians...

Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music: Second Series.
February 1, 1995... This anthology is the second volume of miscellaneous contributions dealing with the inter-disciplinary study of psychoanalysis and music (I reviewed the first volume (1990) in Music & Letters, lxxiii (1992), 285). While the first volume...