The story that Mozart was commissioned to write three piano quartets for publication in Franz Anton Hoffmeister's subscription series has proved to be remarkably resilient in the Mozart literature. According to the account that first appeared in Georg Nikolaus von Nissen's biography (1828), Hoffmeister gave Mozart an advance payment for the works, but decided to withdraw after the first quartet, K.478, was poorly received. The article exposes a series of flaws in this narrative by locating Hoffmeister's edition of K.478 in a wider contextual and bibliographical framework than has been hitherto attempted. A revised chain of events, based on a new understanding of Hoffmeister's business, suggests a more complex narrative for Mozart's dealings with the publisher. It also prompts us to reconsider the circumstances surrounding Mozart's composition of his two completed piano quartets and the reception of his chamber music in Vienna before 1791.

It may seem strange to commemorate the centenary of Satie's birth by a discussion of his output from 1891 to 1895 rather than by an overall appreciation. But his accepted standing as a minor yet historically important composer has had a twofold result: on the one hand, little basic documentary research into his output has been undertaken; on the other, general appreciations of him have been written many times, largely by authors whose main concern is Debussy, Ravel, Les Six or recent French music as a whole. As you would expect, this literature tends to be accurate in outline but unreliable in detail. Therefore I have thought it best, rather than repeat the easily available broad facts of Satie's life and work, to concentrate on some topic which can be more thoroughly covered in the time. The Rose Croix music stands out as being conveniently self-contained, unusual, interesting and misunderstood.

In September 1507, James IV of Scotland issued a licence to the Edinburgh printers Chepman and Millar to produce, among other books, mass books, manuals, matin books and breviaries ‘efter our awin Scottis use’. This same licence (see Appendix 1) prescribes that these new books be used throughout Scotland and that all imports according to Salisbury use be banned. This Scottish use, therefore, was considered to be a separate entity – but what was it?

It has been generally recognized that the music of the Lock Hospital chapel was an important new influence in English and American church music during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The chapel attracted fashionable congregations and thereby disseminated an elegant, theatrical type of hymnody that was far removed from the norms of church music, whether in cathedral, town church, village parish or dissenting meeting-house. Many hymn tunes first used at the Lock Hospital became enormously popular; some still remain in common use; and their style became the model for a ‘school’ of hymn tunes that remained in vogue for several decades.

The purpose of this paper is to describe some aspects of the agenda of listening in the Western tradition. Ancient and modern versions of some of the myths of listening (Orpheus, the Sirens) are compared to illustrate what might be at stake in the activity of listening. A basic contrast is drawn between ancient rhetorical ideas of the power of music to affect the listener and the demand of instrumental music, from the late eighteenth century on, that we understand what the music wants of us. The paper continues with a discussion of some ancient ideas about philosophical listening, which precludes talking and is directed both inwards and outwards, and it ends with some suggestions about themes that a history of listening might pursue.

Ferruccio Busoni could be called an advocate of absolute music because of his frequent description of music as ‘absolute’ and his discussion of music as consisting of pure tones and rhythms found in the vibrating universe. However, he developed idiosyncratic theories about the term, its usage and its ideal manifestation in Tonkunst that remain largely unexamined in scholarly literature. True, Carl Dahlhaus noted Busoni's use of the concept to refer to music unconstrained by traditional forms, but this is merely one aspect of Busoni's views, which also, paradoxically, allowed for and included the visual and explicit connections to culture. The hybridity of Busoni's notion, which this article explores through an examination of writings and representative compositions, is especially relevant for current musicological discourse about absolute music. Sitting uneasily with Dahlhaus's more consistent view of absolute music as music apart from text or programme as well as with new musicological approaches that seek to refute the notion of music's autonomy, Busoni's view of absolute music offers a fascinating middle ground between compositions as discrete artistic artefacts on the one hand and as representations of their immediate culture on the other.

Spain was a latecomer to the cyclic Mass, which began to develop there in the 1490s or late 1480s. A number of different strands in this process – free single movements, mix-and-match Masses, ferial Masses, imports, three-voice Masses, Missae sine nomine and the six cycles of Francisco de Peñalosa – can usefully be separated and laid at least tentatively onto a chronological framework on the basis of manuscript date and composer biography. The surviving evidence seems to show a tradition that arose with particular energy in the decade or so after 1500 and reached maturity within a single generation.

The Lautenlied from Korngold's Die tote Stadt and the Schlummerlied from Schreker's Die Schatzgräber flaunt their ‘folksong’ style in ways that are clearly similar. Contemporary criticism reveals the significance of this stylization. Folksong symbolized genuineness, but also, in its supposedly degenerate form, emotional manipulation of the masses. Both topics informed critics' reaction to diese two arias. Alongside analysis of the many recordings of Korngold's aria up to 1933, the article suggests how folksong characterization contributed to the opera's plot.

In my last paper on the development of Russian opera, I spoke of Dargomijsky and Moussorgsky, whose dramatic and realistic tendencies separated them to some extent from the direct influence of Glinka; and I also gave some account of Serov, the one thorough-going disciple of Wagner whom Russia has produced. To-day, I return with Borodin to that original type of national, lyric opera which Glinka inaugurated in “A Life for the Tsar.”

Although domestic music appears to have flourished in England during the Madrigalian Period, i.e., from 1588 to 1638, as witness well-known and often-quoted passages from Morley's “Plaine and Easie Introduction,” 1597, and Peacham's “Compleat Gentleman,” 1620 (a work, by-the-bye, just reprinted by the University of Oxford), any idea of a public performance does not appear to have suggested itself. The professional musician of that day was either a member of a Cathedral choir or was attached to some family of distinction, as, for instance, Christopher Simpson to that of Sir John Bolles. The pursuit of music as a relaxation was of necessity confined to those who possessed means and leisure. The political troubles effectually put a stop to such pursuits, with the result that several well-known musicians, among them Captain Cook and Wm. Lawes, found their occupation gone, and from a feeling of loyalty actually took up arms in the Royalist cause, in which the latter lost his life.

St. Cecily, a Roman virgin, beautiful, of noble and wealthy birth, ‘believing the Gospel, carried it alwaies about her, reading often thereon’. But her father betrothed her to Valerian, a young aristocrat who was not a Christian. He, ‘being inflamed with the love of Cecily, desired much the wedding day’. But Cecily ‘fasted, wept, and prayed continually’, desiring God to preserve her virginity, ‘for that this marriage was not by her desired … since she had given herself wholly to Jesus Christ’. Nevertheless the wedding took place and only afterwards, when she was alone with Valerian in the bridal chamber, was she able to tell him of ‘a waighty matter … I have an Angel of God in my company, who is jealous of me, and guardeth my body very diligently. If he see thee so hardy, as to come near, or touch me, with carnal or lascivious love, he will chastise thee rigorously; but if he see, that thou love me with pure and chast love, he will love thee, as he lovest me.’ Valerian, we are told, ‘hearing these words, was somewhat troubled’.

In The Times of 24 April 1963 there appeared a headline which read: ‘The Computer as Composer?’. A mathematics lecturer in Bristol had been reading into a computer the elementary rules of melodic construction, in order that the computer should be able to compose, in return, well-constructed melodies. The lecturer had spoken of programming the characteristics of the great composers, as to melody and harmony, and of getting back ‘original compositions in their style’. We in this, the first paper to be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association on computers and their applications to music, are not going to make such extravagant propositions. We aim to give an introduction to the ways in which a computer may be used for musical analysis, and at the same time to convey the ‘feel’ of working with a computer. We shall present two analytical projects which have been designed specially for demonstration in this paper. But before presenting our analytical projects, a few preliminary words must be said about the computer and how we use it. We shall speak very briefly about the nature of a computer, about the way in which we submit work to it, about the way in which we present music for it to ‘read’, and about the way in which we tell the computer what it is to do with that music.

In the paper which I had the honour of reading before the Musical Association in January, 1900, I spoke of the innate musical genius of the Russian people, and of their blind, instinctive groping towards a desired end—the foundation of a School of National Music. I showed how the ideas of Varlamov, Cavos, Lvov, Verstovsky, and other musicians at the beginning of the last century, tended continually in this direction; but how none of them—gifted amateurs as they were—had been strong enough to achieve their purpose. Finally, I related how Glinka, with the intuition and power which belong to genius alone, caught up the spirit, not only of Russian music, but of the music of the neighbouring East—and in “A life for the Tsar” and “Rousslan and Lioudmilla” realised the long dream of a national epic opera.

I would like to begin my paper with a quotation from Sir John Hawkins's History of Music, because it was his short note about the music of Christ's Hospital, which set me off on my present investigation.

‘In this Hospital anno 3 Jac. a free singing school was founded and endowed by Robert Dow, … wherin, as in the College of Dulwich … the children were to be taught pricksong. These, as far as can be recollected, are the only endowments of the kind since the Reformation. At Dulwich the boys are taught musical notes, and are able to chant; but at Christ's Hospital they sing only psalm tunes, and those by ear.’

The Attwood papers recently entered the public domain, having been acquired by the British Library. This is fitting, for they constitute a kind of national monument—a vital force that has made itself felt upon English musical thought and training for nearly two centuries. Ever since Attwood brought them back from his period of study with Mozart in Vienna in 1785–7 they have been used repeatedly for teaching purposes, and handed on with reverence from master to disciple (thus escaping total destruction, the usual fate of such documents). Upon Attwood's death in 1838 the papers passed to his pupil John Goss, who had already published the Minuet in C major, perhaps the best known of Attwood's pieces rewritten by Mozart, in his Introduction to Harmony and Thorough Bass (1833).

In his magisterial Lagrime di San Pietro (1595) Orlando di Lasso composed a cycle of 20 madrigals on texts by Luigi Tansillo on the theme of St Peter's denial of Christ and his subsequent remorse, capped by a Latin motet (‘Vide homo‘) representing the rebuke of the crucified Christ. The Lagrime may be seen as a penitential gesture on Lasso's part, but a textual and musical analysis also suggests numerous parallels with contemporary Catholic spiritual exercises, particularly those of Ignatius of Loyola and Luis of Granada. The cycle thus takes its place in a broader Counter-Reformation discourse of meditation and penance.

After the First World War, some musicians embraced ‘international’ identities in novel ways, requiring novel strategies.6 During the 1920s, internationalist initiatives were launched in musicology, music education, folk music and more, joining a more general proliferation of institutions devoted to cultural internationalism.7 In the domain of Western art music, the most high-profile internationalist organization of the era was the ISCM, founded in Salzburg in 1922.8 The ISCM’s principal activity during the interwar period was to organize an annual contemporary music festival. This peripatetic event, hosted in a different European city each year, served two intertwined ambitions: to promote contemporary music and to further international cooperation. The latter aspiration gave rise to an unofficial nickname – the ‘musical League of Nations’ – encapsulating the ISCM’s perceived affinities with other, heftier internationalist endeavours.9 A ‘musical League of Nations’ was, however, an ambivalent and precarious project: the moniker recognized, through analogy, a necessary proximity to the era’s chief prototype of an international structure; but it clung, by way of its adjective, to a degree of detachment from the treacherous waters of politics and diplomacy.

As every musician knows, John Field invented the Nocturne, and by doing so earned for himself his small but secure niche in music's Pantheon. The word Nocturne was not entirely new to music. Haydn, Mozart, and many lesser composers had used its Italian or German equivalents for vocal and instrumental works intended for performance at night. But the notturni and Nachtmusiken of the eighteenth century have little in common with the wordless love-songs which Field called Nocturnes. His invention was something more important than an evocative title; it was the crystallization of an idiom, and through this idiom a new aspect of the romantic movement could be channelled into the mainstream of music.

This article explores music’s role in radio drama. While musical aspects of early experimental radio dramas have often been explored, the music that figures in the Anglo-American radio play tradition has remained under-theorized. Borrowing interpretative tools from audiovisual discourses can help to elucidate some of the subtleties of the medium, but methodological inadequacies soon become apparent. As exemplars of modern radio dramatic technique, the BBC’s complete adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories (1989–98) are explored, their music interwoven into the drama with consistent levels of subtlety. I draw primarily from Michel Chion’s application of the ‘acousmatic’, showing how the ambiguity concerning the location of the enveloping solo violin music – Holmes’s instrument – offers twists and turns to the agency of the unfolding narrative. I examine further how a sustained technique of intertextual allusion creates what I call a paradiegetic space, in which pre-existing music, heard within the dramas, provides a parenthetical narrative that unravels in parallel with the primary narrative, reflecting back on its themes, changing its meanings and moreover challenging our preconceptions about radio’s particular acousmatic zone.