In the 1890s, two musicians travelled between Britain and South Africa. One was the first examiner to travel abroad to examine for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, Franklin Taylor. At the same time as Taylor’s arrival in the Cape in 1894, a black South African composer, John Knox Bokwe, prepared to republish a tonic sol-fa hymnal containing many hymns that eventually became popular in Britain, to which Bokwe travelled multiple times. Although these narratives might appear to reflect highly divergent contexts for musical experience, the fluctuating constructions of imperial authority encountered in the careers of both these men link their stories together more deeply than their geographical and cultural disparities set them apart. The synchronous presentation of their stories in this article thus raises questions of how music emerged as a metaphor for constructions of imperial knowledge across shifting cultural boundaries.

One of the less studied aspects of post-war musical life is private sponsorship of American modernist composers, such as that by the Fromm Music Foundation (FMF) established in 1952. Using unpublished letters and documents from the FMF archives at Harvard and interviews with people who worked with the founder, Paul Fromm, this article discusses how Fromm's involvement in his foundation led to ventures that were influential on the development of American contemporary music and its relationship to academia. Unlike the Ford or Rockefeller foundations, Fromm sought the role of patron, fostering close relationships with composers and accepting their advice. Yet composers in Fromm's network often had aesthetic visions that were different from his. This article discusses Fromm's sponsorship of the Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies and the journal Perspectives of New Music, and how the different, complex and contradictory visions held by Fromm and his advisers were representative of those in the larger American music scene.

When I speak of the recorder as a musical instrument, I do so knowing that you cannot fail to have heard the instrument at some time, as it is now once again an integral part of our musical life.

The modern choirboy is such a familar object, at any rate to those who go to Church, that it is not generally realised that he is in any sense an historical figure, and by some is even regarded as a necessary nuisance or as a person of no serious importance.

Yet in this familar figure we can, perhaps as nowhere else, see the living embodiment of some of those things which are most distinctively national in the music of our country.

A short paper can give but a glimpse at the life of a professional musician who worked in London for over half a century. Baptised Domenico Carlo Maria, Dragonetti was born in the poor parish of St. Gervasio and St. Protasio (called St. Trovaso), Venice. As with most details of his early life, there are conflicting reports as to his date of birth. Vincent Novello gives 10 April 1763, but Caffi, the musical historian and friend of Dragonetti, gives 7 April. Other dates that are variously given include 1755 (a date which also appears on one of Dragonetti's bows, now in the author's possession), ‘1762 or 1764’, and 1771.

The Movable Do ! Words pregnant with meaning, instinct with reality to the musician ! The text of the sermons in sounds expounding the universal message which the world calls music.

On two previous occasions I have had the pleasure of addressing the Members of this Association on the subject of bells, and I have ventured to choose for consideration this evening another aspect of the same subject in which there is a great deal to be done by musicians, and which is of much interest to them.

My object in reading this paper before the British Musical Association is to describe certain observations I have made concerning the folk-lore and music of the south of Spain. I shall not attempt to deal with the great problem of Spanish musical history: that has been done by Professor Trend in his excellent books such as The Music of Spanish History and Manuel de Falla. My study of the music of the south of Spain is mainly based upon personal experience as a minstrel in the towns and villages of the country, where I had the opportunity of mixing with folk-singers, guitarists, gipsy minstrels and dancers. My main object in studying thus the music of the Andalusian folk was to enable me to arrive at a deeper understanding of that elusive Indian Romany race which has played such an important part in the history of European music. It will, therefore, not be amiss if to-day I consider briefly the history of the gipsies as minstrels.

Some time ago, in collaboration with Professor Read of St. Andrews, I was engaged in the transcription of some music contained in a book on Alchemy by one Michael Maier. The book, entitled Atalanta fugiens, was published near Frankfort in 1618. It contained fifty Discourses on Alchemy, each being preceded by a woodcut, an epigram in doubtful Latin verse and the first couplet of each of the latter set to music in canon; all the canons being written above, below, or around the same Canto Fermo. I had intended to speak of the music to-day, but as most of what I should have said has recently appeared in Professor Read's book Prelude to Chemistry, in which some of the canons are reproduced, I did not feel justified in repeating matter so recently issued in print. I have the book here and shall be glad to show it to anyone caring to see it at the close of the proceedings.

“Criticism,” said a friend casually one day to me, “is the salt of life.” I think that is true: as long as man has experiences, he will persist in discussing them. Music is an experience, and about that I will put a preliminary question: — When was the criticism of music born ?—and will offer an answer for your possible acceptance. It was when the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God. shouted for joy?” The inscrutable wonder of creation was then in performance, it was sung to the tune of the music of the spheres, and a selection of mankind—those whose antecedents made it likely that they would have the requisite knowledge— were filled with the love that precedes understanding, and affirmed the glory of that wonder.

It so happened that my first acquaintance with English music of the time of Queen Elizabeth was made, not with the madrigal, but with the music of the virginals. I have devoted one of my former books to virginal music, and it is my pleasant duty to admit that the authors really responsible for that work are two members of your Association, Mr. Fuller-Maitland and Mr. Barclay Squire. In fact, without their edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, with its great store of learning, I should not have been able to write the greater part of my book.

I feel that my presence here requires a double apology for I can claim to be neither an authority on eighteenth century music nor a pianist. My interest in eighteenth century music is mainly a practical one and my only claim to your attention is that I have in certain transcriptions and arrangements both for the concert hall and the theatre succeeded, I hope, in popularising certain old music which might otherwise have remained familiar only to the scholar. As a pianist my limitations are even more marked and I can hardly hope to demonstrate that, as a writer for the keyboard, Roseingrave was second only to Domenico Scarlatti. Roseingrave's most striking work, however, lies not so much in his brilliant toccata-like movements as in his more introspective and experimental voluntaries and I hope that later on I may be able to give at least some slight account of these fascinating and original works.

The music we are going to hear this evening is really the fulfilment of a desire expressed by this Association nearly thirty-one years ago. After a paper on the subject of lute-music by Miss Janet Dodge, Mr. James Matthew said: “We were many of us rather hoping we might have the pleasure of hearing the actual instrument,” and Dr. Southgate added “We should of course have liked to hear the lute.” But in those days much patient effort had still to be made before the art of lute-playing (distinct from a kind of bastard imitation on the guitar) could be said to have been fully recovered; and so they had to be content with a piano. Even to-day, the sound of the lute will be strange and unknown to most of us here; and as I am convinced that any critical discussion of music for an unknown instrument can only be misleading, I have asked Mrs. Poulton to play the very generous programme you have before you, in the hope that you will be able to gain some clear idea how this music really sounded at the hands of its composers.

In discussing Programme Music one may consider it in relation to those principles which apply to the conception and the expression of an art, whether that art be music or painting or sculpture. But as such a survey of æsthetical questions would demand for its consideration a space of time far exceeding that at our disposal at present, it seems more appropriate that we should limit ourselves to the purely musical aspects of the matter. I will content myself with saying in this connection, that while the most advanced school of music of to-day—that which begins where Wagner left off—insists on the paramount importance of a literary idea being the basis of the composition, the most advanced schools of sculpture and painting, those of Rodin and Whistler and Degas, assert that the literary idea is the least matter to be considered in plastic or pictorial art, and that the chief if not the only end is the display of technique. I may point out a very curious inconsistency in this connection—namely, that among musicians I constantly find men who, while proclaiming the supremacy of absolute music, see no beauty in absolute painting and sculpture, and admire the most flagrant instances of a programme in these arts.

Of all musicians, organists have always had the greatest difficulty in getting regular practice on their instruments. Electric organ blowers were first used about 1900 and up to this time big church organs were usually blown by human power. One, or more often several men, called the “calcantores” or “calcants,” had to do this hard work. A big organ built at Halberstadt in 1361 had twenty bellows and ten men were needed to tread them. The church engaged these calcants for the services on Sundays and festival days. Organists had not much opportunity to play the organ except during services; they were always badly paid, could not afford to hire calcants, and, moreover, the Church did not encourage practice on what was probably a costly instrument intended only for use in the worship of God. So organists had to practice at home. In the fourteenth century some of them possessed small organs called positives. Perhaps a kind wife or other member of the family did the blowing, but hardly to such an extent as to make regular practice possible. A still smaller organ was the portative. This could be carried about and was often blown by the organist himself. As one hand was used to work the bellows, playing with both hands was not possible.

The subject of this lecture, because of its exotic nature, would appear, at first sight, to be of little moment to Westerners. For that reason it may be advisable to indicate why attention should be directed to this question quite apart from any intrinsic worth that it may have. The doctrine of the Éthos, so highly prized in the art of antiquity, has an abiding interest, and therefore one may assume that its history may have a similar attraction. As Jules Combarieu pointed out not long since,∗ the doctrine of the Éthos had its origin in magic, and I take the liberty to draw up for you its genealogy, because, in the subject under discussion, it plays an important part.

Little enough has been written on the Venetian operas of the second half of the seventeenth century, and to all save a few, familiar perhaps with Hellmuth Christian Wolff's pioneering work on that subject, or with Simon Towneley Worsthorne's more recent study, Carlo Pallavicino can hardly be more than a name. Indeed, doubts have been raised about the name itself. The libretti to three of his operas name the composer as Pallavicini, and perhaps following these, or impressed by his prolific output, Burney and others since have also pluralised the composer. However, there is good authority for the spelling which I adopt for this paper, for two documents preserved in the Venetian archives bear the composer's signature, and without doubt he signs himself, in a neat and confident hand, Carlo Pallavicino.

The abundant leisure of Eastern life affords ample opportunity for the study of the curious customs, the cultured arts, the profound sciences of the people, who are never slow to extend to the Western, who dwells, though but for a few years, among them, the graciousness of their hospitality; and to open freely the treasure-houses wherein the stores of their learning lie hoarded. But you will well understand that difficulties innumerable impede the acquisition of exact information by those who are ignorant of the languages. So much of Eastern learning is traditional, so much of the practice is hereditary, that it is of first importance to acquire it only from those who are in the direct succession of knowledge. When they are discovered, and the necessary formal introductions have been accomplished in accordance with the rigour of native etiquette, a fresh difficulty arises which is in truth a very labour of Sisyphus, so often has the stone of knowledge to be rolled over the same ground. The interpreter must possess not only a good knowledge of English, but also a quick intelligence to grasp the technicalities of the subject, the double set of art terms used by the questioner and the questioned. In such a subject as music, where each can only use those terms with which he is familiar, you will easily understand the patience necessary to arrive at facts, the prolonged process of sifting to which all statements have to be subjected, and the almost indefinite postponement of conclusions.

For most of us, singer and musicologist alike, English song from the death of Purcell to the Victorian ‘renaissance’ nearly two centuries later is represented by a few of the Shakespearean settings of Arne, and a small handful of such perennial favourites as Leveridge's ‘Black-ey'd Susan’, Boyce's ‘Heart of Oak’, Dibdin's ‘Tom Bowling’, and Horn's once-ubiquitous ‘Cherry ripe’. As for our knowledge of the cultural environment in which such pieces naturally have their place, that is generally more limited still. Though theatrical in origin, we may take as typical of the sort of vocal melody which was popular with early Georgian audiences, Arne's charming ‘O come, o come, my dearest’ from The Fall of Phaeton (1736). If we agree, with Ernest Walker, that such a song is, in its way, ‘a sparkling polished little gem’, then it may be fairly maintained that English song during the first half of the eighteenth century is a veritable treasure trove of delightful music—none of it very ‘great’, certainly, but much of it worthy of a better fate than the oblivion to which it has been carelessly consigned.

In 1892 Bernard Bosanquet wrote:

As a Hegelian, Bosanquet had every reason to believe in the strength of the German idealist tradition, even if its supremacy was seriously challenged in the second half of the nineteenth century; as an Englishman, and brought up in the English philosophical tradition, he was fully aware of the important British contribution to both speculative and experimental psychology. However, bringing various intellectual and philosophical traditions together is no easy task and we can witness a continuing division in the orientation of many scholars who, although not philosophers themselves, felt the need to strengthen their critical theories with ideas which originated in the domain of philosophy.