“The quest of origins,” says a recent writer∗—“the quest of origins seems to have a special attraction for the modern mind.”

Cornelius Cardew named his monumental graphic score Treatise after Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophical masterpiece Tractatus logico-philosophicus, and this well-known fact has engendered speculation about whether there might be other connections between Cardew’s composition and Wittgenstein’s book. Previous commentaries have focused on possible allusions to the Tractatus in the visual imagery employed by Cardew, and this article includes further suggestions of this type. However, it concentrates on more general affinities between Treatise, as Cardew conceived of it prior to his involvement with the free improvisation group AMM, and the philosophy adumbrated in the Tractatus. Foremost among these is a striking concordance between Cardew’s initial enthusiasm for an isomorphic mode of interpreting Treatise and Wittgenstein’s picture theory of the proposition. The article also excavates traces of the picture theory in the numerological basis of Volo solo, a more conventionally notated by-product of the Treatise project.

In 1913 Milhaud set passages of André Gide's La porte étroite as a song-cycle, Alissa. However, he subsequently left the youthful work unpublished, although it was performed by Jane Bathori and Milhaud at the Sorbonne on 11 February 1920. 18 years after its composition he returned to it, and the revised score was published in 1931 as op. 9. It was rare for him to revise earlier works (and, indeed, he seldom made sketches for any compositions). However, he did return to some other works from the same period, the First String Quartet, op. 5 (1912), and the Suite for Piano, op. 8 (1913), simply indicating sections to be cut from the published score of the quartet, and removing a movement from the suite. That Milhaud chose to intervene more extensively in Alissa indicates his attachment to the work and reveals, within the context of one work, the process of compositional growth more generally discernible in his output between these dates.

In the seventeenth century the process of appointing court musicians was often complicated by struggles between conflicting agendas. Recently discovered letters of Saxon Prince Johann Georg II (1613–80) document the nature of the process in Dresden during the tenure of court Kapellmeister Heinrich Schütz, and the attempts of Schütz and the prince to steer Elector Johann Georg I's hiring decisions in a direction that would further their cause: the cultivation of an awareness of the modern Italian style of singing in the Dresden court musicians. The letters reveal the previously unknown collaborative effort of Schütz and the prince to fill the position of vice-Kapellmeister with the ‘right’ musician (i.e. an Italian or Italian-trained one), and to keep the ‘wrong’ man out of the job. In the course of this enterprise, the prince participated in the negotiations for several appointments, including that of Christoph Bernhard, whom he then sent to a northern court to study with an Italian singer. Although the collaborators' mission ended in failure, the story of their efforts casts light on the musical politicking at a seventeenth-century court and on the implications such campaigns had for the lives of individual musicians.

This article explores the filmic relationship between music, text and image through an intertextual reading of Herzog's two Amazonian films, Aguirre: Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. When Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo encounter each other in the rainforest, 300 years apart, a complicated interplay of history and legend, truth and fiction, is initiated. Awash with magical occurrence, the forest has its own endlessly repeating soundtrack (written by Popul Vuh). The ability of both explorers to defend themselves from the forest depends on their relationship to this music: Aguirre, the earlier explorer, is deaf to the circular sound and attempts to overlay it with a written account of their journey. Fitzcarraldo, on the other hand, enters the forest equipped with a gramophone that plays Verdi arias; he comes with his own soundtrack. Comparison between the two journeys exposes the conventional uses of text/speech and music/song in film, to reveal music as the predominant driving force behind filmic narrative.

When I was invited two years ago to read a paper on some subject connected with the research work on which I was then engaged, I felt a certain hesitation about doing so. For I naturally assumed that in the case of Beethoven a good deal of ground must have already been covered by earlier contributors. But on looking up the records of the Royal Musical Association I discovered to my surprise that since 1874, the year of its foundation, only six papers had been read on subjects closely relating to Beethoven (and in one of these he shares the honours with Mozart). Six papers in 88 years! And, what is even more startling, not one has been read since 1927, the centenary of Beethoven's death, that is to say, for the last 35 years. I need hardly add that such an apparent lack of interest in the life and work of this composer prompted me to make some amends, however small, for an indignity amounting almost to lèse-majesté.

Let me begin by confessing that the first date in the title of this paper is unintentionally but unavoidably misleading. For when, on June 7, 1753, the British Museum was incorporated by an Act authorizing the purchase of Sir Hans Sloane's collections of books, manuscripts, prints, medals and other curiosities, the library material contained little or no music. The latter part of the 18th century did indeed see the uncertain beginnings of the copyright deposit of music, and several purchases for the general library included a small quantity of antiquarian works, but the Music Room did not coalesce into something like its present shape until well into the reign of Victoria.

Vaughan Williams's music divides fairly easily into three Beethovenian periods: the works written up to 1914, which include several of his most deservedly popular and lyrical works; those written between the two wars, when he was striking out in several new directions; and the final period, from the Second World War to his death in 1958, during which he became even more prolific. His reputation rests on the nine symphonies, on the ballet Job, which like Elgar's Falstaff is of symphonic stature, on his operas and on a number of large-scale choral works. Also, of course, on the delightful songs which first made his name a household word.

Most of the members of this Association are doubtless aware that from time to time efforts have been made to obtain a permanent record of music played extemporaneously. A little consideration of some of the conditions attached to our art will show the desirability of successfully achieving such an aim. Before this assembly there is no need to dilate on the fact that the trained composer is just as able—so to speak—to hear with his eyes, as ordinary people are to understand the import of words from silently reading them. The musician composes, or should at least write down his ideas, at the desk; indeed, in the case of orchestral or elaborate polyphonic music, no other course is practicable. This is the sound and proper method; and so long as intelligible “form” rather than disconnected rambling is recognised as an indispensable necessity on which to build, so long will the trained composer prefer the comparative slowness of writing at his desk, to dashing off his, perhaps cruder, ideas when sitting at his instrument. But having admitted the advantage of this mode of proceeding, we must not forget that there is also another side of music-art that ought not to be overlooked, and that is extemporaneous playing. I need not waste your time by dwelling on the various grades of this feature. Such extemporaneous playing as consists of fearful and wonderful chords, more or less vague, coming from nowhere in particular, and leading to the same place, that one too frequently hears doing duty as an in voluntary in our churches, or the astonishing preludising of youthful scramblers on the pianoforte, cannot too soon be forgotten. But above and far beyond these immature essays is the playing of true artists, whom nature has richly endowed with the faculty that we term inspiration.

The subject which I have chosen is the most important in the whole range of musical aesthetics, and it is one with which we are particularly concerned to-day, when the air is alive with experiments of the most far-reaching kind, the results of which must affect the very foundations of music itself.

The Masque of the English Court in the seventeenth century was the vigorous and richly endowed descendant of a long line of gradually developing progenitors.

Both Italy and England had their share in the nurture and improvement of this species of entertainment; its origin and earlier cultivation belonging to Italy, and its final and most successful elaboration to our own country.

The survey which I propose to take of the popular dances of the eighteenth century cannot profess to deal with any but the smallest part of the contents of the dance books which appeared in such numbers during the period now under our consideration.

The last time we had any discussion of aesthetics in our Association was in 1945, when I read a paper written by Dr. Glen Haydon, which related art to theory of knowledge. This intellectual line is favoured by American philosophers. Susanne Langer, a pupil of Whitehead, has in her Philosophy in a New Key (1942) used not so much art in general as music in particular as the key to her theory of knowledge, which is a semantic theory like Glen Haydon's. This trend is worth noting and contrasting with theories of musical aesthetics in which emotion is the kernel. Among musicians it is almost axiomatic that the stock-in-trade in which they deal is feeling in the medium of sound. They apply their technique to sound production in order to do a deal with their audiences in feeling. One of the fundamental problems of the aesthetics of music is therefore to examine this presupposition.

The death, on 14 August 1587, of Guglielmo Gonzaga Duke of Mantua and Monferrato, heralded a sudden shift in the political, economic and artistic policies of the Duchy. His successor, Vincenzo, had notions of a Mantuan role in the peninsular greatly disproportionate to the size of its territory and population, and it was undoubtedly an important part of his conception that the Gonzaga should be seen as patrons of the arts on a scale compatible with these ambitions. During the 1580s, Vincenzo had conspicuously preferred the hedonistic atmosphere of Ferrara and Florence to the Counter-Reformation gloom of his father's court, and in the years immediately after his accession began to import cultural fashions from these other centres. One important change in the musical establishment was the formation, probably completed by April 1589, of a permanent ensemble of virtuoso singers on the Ferrarese model. Another was the rejuvenation of theatre and spectacle at court, culminating in the presentation of opera and ballet during the carnival seasons of 1607 and 1608 and the wedding celebrations of the latter year. The following considers one aspect of this revived interest in music and spectacle, the attempted productions of Battista Guarini's Il pastor fido during the 1590s. The first section deals with the problems surrounding the gestation of the play, the attempted productions and the surviving music. The second considers some of the novel aspects of that music in relation to other traditions.

The first necessity in a paper of this nature is to offer some definition of the term ‘Mannheim concerto’. In the past there has been some tendency to view the musicians working at the Palatinate court during the reign of the Elector Karl Theodor from 1743 to 1778, and the last years of his predecessor Karl Phüipp, as a somewhat isolated school. It is clear, however, from the studies of Hugo Riemann and more recently Gerhard Croll, that not only did the orchestral personnel come from many different parts of Europe, including Düsseldorf, Innsbruck, Vienna, Bohemia and Italy, over a period of many years, but that they were also constantly leaving Mannheim for posts elsewhere, or else going on often lengthy concert tours, especially to Paris, which throughout the period remained the great centre of attraction for the Mannheimers in view of its important publishing trade and flourishing concert life, both public and private. In addition, the Elector, who in musical matters was certainly among the more enlightened and generous rulers of his day, was continually sending promising young musicians off on study tours to Italy to complete their musical education. Among such musicians can be counted Christian Cannabich, Johann Ritschel and Georg Joseph Vogler. Thus the musical contacts with the outside world were indeed wide, and it is often impossible to tell whether particular concertos were composed for Mannheim, Paris or elsewhere, especially as the Mannheim court music library has long since totally disappeared, and we now rely on the relatively few printed sources and the manuscript copies to be found distributed throughout Europe. For present purposes the term ‘Mannheim concerto’ will be taken to include all concertos by composers whose activities were centred for a substantial time at the Mannheim court, and will thus include the works of those such as Carl and Anton Stamitz, the sons of Johann, who spent their formative years within the Mannheim circle, even though they both left Mannheim in 1770.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—I must first of all apologize to you for presenting a paper which has been, I regret to say, very hastily prepared, owing to my recent severe illness, and to consequent pressure upon the time at my disposal. I must next ask you to believe that I approach my subject with great diffidence for two reasons—-firstly, the inability of any one mind to comprehend the various and multitudinous thoughts and ideas that must from time to time possess the soul of every true musician; and secondly, because of my personal inability to give adequate expression—even to my own views upon so difficult and delicate a matter as the consideration of the relative position of our Art-Science to the unenlightened or popular world.