The subject of this paper is, I am aware, a little outside of the usual programme of the Musical Association, as it deals partly with matters of building and architecture; but it is of some consequence that music should be heard under the most advantageous conditions, and some of those whom I am addressing may have to decide on some occasion on the choice of a plan for a concert hall, and I should be glad if I could think that any of the suggestions I have to make may be of use to them in the future. The construction of theatres for opera I am purposely leaving on one side; opera is a spectacular as well as a musical business, and the theatre is a special class of building, which would demand a paper to itself. We are here considering only the question of hearing music.

Ladies and Gentlemen,—The emotional aspects and sympathetic effects of the sister arts is the title of the paper which I have the honour of reading to you, but it has especial reference to the relationship of the sister arts— poetry, painting, and music. I need not say that any one of these three subjects would require a volume for itself, instead of a paper combining the three. It is therefore necessary that I should state at once the object I have had in view, namely, the throwing together of a few ideas interspersed with anecdotes when appropriate. I assign to music the position of the younger sister which she indubitably holds at the present day, but, in point of fact, in one sense, she is the elder sister, and as such I shall introduce her. I must ask you to define to yourselves this simple question—What is music? The answer must not be a preconceived idea or predilection, without a reason for your belief. A mighty river can be traced to its source, which may be a dripping rivulet; in like manner we must go to the fountain head, and trace music back to its primitive origin. What is music? To my mind music is a deviation from monotonous sound in its strict sense. If I hear the wild sounds which the wind capriciously elicits from the Æolian harp, and which can produce according to its force the softness of a child's slumber or the boisterousness of rage—this I call music. When I hear the gentle murmuring of a purling stream, the breaking of a wave on the seashore, the chirping of birds, or the echoing of a bell borne o'er the plain from distant hills—this I call music. If such be the case, then, music is the elder of the three sisters. Professor Tyndall shows that music differs from noise in that the sound entitled to the definition of a musical note is produced by regular and perfectly periodic vibrations, whereas noise is caused by an irregular succession of shocks. The shaking of a tool-box with its various metal contents can only produce a noise, because the shaking makes an irregular succession of shocks; but the drawing of a violin bow across a string produces music.

‘Multivalence‘ and ‘ambiguity’: these are the words that serve as the rallying cry in a recent group of essays that, with their strident, polemical tone, seem intent on dictating what is and what is not proper and acceptable in present-day opera analysis, at least as it is practised on opera from about Mozart's time to that of Puccini.

This article examines the employment of brass instrumentalists in German cities around 1500, as a reflection of the political circumstances of the epoch, where rivalry between the distinct components of the social hierarchy encouraged the assertion of power and status through musical patronage. Archival records and contemporary chronicles provide invaluable insights into the performances of civic brass instrumentalists, whether in the provision of signals (by the city watchmen or those who played alongside the cities’ troops) or for the entertainment of the citizens and their guests (within the civic instrumental ensembles – the Stadtpfeifer (‘town pipers’)). Although the use of ambiguous nomenclature in contemporary records can hinder a definitive understanding of the instruments used by these musicians, the musicians different duties within the city walls can often be inferred. Important insights can thereby be gained into the extent of the patronage of these civic brass instrumentalists, their roles within everyday city life, and their resultant contribution to the communication of civic strength to the populace and their guests.

This article explores aspects of transatlantic culture through the career and works of the baritone, librettist and impresario Henri Drayton (1822–72). Using the published operas as well as reviews from period newspapers, the author retraces the events of the Philadelphia-born Drayton's professional life. Concentrating on the creative works, the author shows how Drayton went from playing stock roles at London's Drury Lane Theatre to collaborating with composers such as Joseph Duggan and Edward James Loder. With his wife, the soprano Susanna Lowe, Drayton performed in what he termed ‘drawing-room’ operas. Their popularity attracted the attention of visiting US impresario P. T. Barnum, who brought Drayton to New York in 1859. When his success in the USA was cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War, Drayton returned to London and created a one-man ‘entertainment’, Federals and Confederates. Spending what would be his final years as a member of the Richings English Opera Company, Drayton returned to New York in 1869.

When the meal drew to a close the lady who had served the wine produced a harp and began to play it so sweetly that it was a wondrous thing to hear. So Sir Gawayn listened to her very willingly for a while until he began to feel the cold, for his tunic was not at all well dried. And when the cold got to him he rose up and went to the great fire which was in the middle of the Hall and took a stool and sat down before the fire, turning his shoulder and his back [to the flames] and warmed himself until he slept, as one who had been afflicted the whole day with the rain and the wind.

This article examines a range of writings on the status of musical interpretation in Austria and Germany during the early decades of the twentieth century, and argues their relevance to current debates. While the division outlined by recent research between popular-critical hermeneutics and analytical ‘energetics’ at this time remains important, hitherto neglected contemporary reflections by Paul Bekker and Kurt Westphal demonstrate that the success of energetics was not due to any straightforward intellectual victory. Rather, the images of force and motion promoted by 1920s analysis were carried by historical currents in the philosophy, educational theory and arts of the time, revealing a culturally situated source for twenty-first-century analysis's preoccupations with motion and embodiment. The cultural relativization of such images may serve as a retrospective counteraction to the analytical rationalizing processes that culminated specifically in Heinrich Schenker's later work, and more generally in the privileging of graphic and notational imagery over poetic paraphrase.

The Committee of the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation possesses material indicating that Mendelssohn wrote passionate love letters to Jenny Lind entreating her to join him in an adulterous relationship and threatening suicide as a means of exerting pressure upon her, and that these letters were destroyed on being discovered after her death. The notion that Mendelssohn would have written such letters conflicts strikingly with the received view of his character. Nevertheless, the veracity of the material is beyond doubt, and, while it does not include specific evidence that Mendelssohn and Lind began an affair, it points more clearly than has hitherto been possible towards an answer to this question. Thus it necessitates a radical revision of perceptions of these two major musicians. For Otto Goldschmidt, Lind's husband, destroying the letters was crucial in protecting the reputations not only of his wife and Mendelssohn but also of himself and his family.

The reception history of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies in America offers striking evidence of multiple, previously unidentified, Continental and English connections to the musical thought of John Sullivan Dwight (1813–93), the first American-born critic of art music, and therefore to early American conceptions of the symphony in the 1840s. These direct links illuminate the history and criticism of the first performance in America of Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125, which took place in New York in 1846. From the many sources associated with Dwight's musical learning and aesthetic education, I have chosen in this article to examine Dwight's literary interest in Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller's poem ‘An die Freude’ and in Thomas Carlyle's biography of Schiller, to document his knowledge of commentary on the symphony by the German critic Adolf Bernhard Marx, and to describe Dwight's response to the initial American performance of the Ninth Symphony.

After the very erudite paper on the Genevan Psalter which was read before this Association (in June, 1918) by Dr. Woodward, there is very little ground left for me to cover.

The whole question of metrical psalmody has been so thoroughly ventilated by so many authorities that but for the little book we are to discuss this afternoon, I doubt if I should have had anything fresh to say to you.

The subject of Orchestral and Choral Balance has by no means received the attention due to it from concert-givers, conductors, writers on music, or the public. It has occasionally called forth a casual remark from Press critics when something beyond the ordinary has been noticeable in a performance; writers on orchestration have touched upon it to some extent, and an occasional lecture has been devoted to it; but in nearly every case there has been a mere nibbling at the fringe of a great subject. Even where a general survey has been attempted, it has often taken the form of a sermon preached upon some definite text, such as, for example, the otherwise valuable paper read by Professor Prout before the last Conference of the Incorporated Society of Musicians. In that paper, Dr. Prout showed that his choice of the subject was due to his having noticed a few bad examples of ill-considered balance between choir and band, where the choir was numerically much too strong for the orchestra, such as at the Handel Festivals, to a smaller extent in the Albert Hall, and to a still smaller extent at the Festivals of Birmingham and Leeds. But this is only one aspect of the subject. And though one must admit that the indictment against these performances was justified, I fail to see any justification for a general attack in the same direction upon the relative proportions of bands and choirs in this country. It is sufficient to point out that though the band may be frequently overpowered by the choir at the Crystal Palace and at the Albert Hall, the complaint of many musicians who really know what they are talking about is that many choral societies are painfully overweighted by their accompaniments.

More has been written about why Satie composed than about how he composed; about the aesthetic implications of his precursive art for the present century than about the techniques of his art itself. My aim is to attempt to redress the balance, in part at least; to try to focus on some of the problems Satie encountered as he sought to satisfy the increased demand for his music which followed his sudden rise to the forefront of public attention largely due to the efforts of Ravel, Ricardo Viñes and Jean Cocteau over the years 1911 to 1915. If I look to anything as a model, it is Patrick Gowers’ pioneering paper on ‘Satie's Rose Croix Music (1891–1895)’ which explored Satie's use of systematic harmonic devices, working methods and formal experiments from the evidence of his manuscript notebooks. To the best of my knowledge, no such complementary study relating to Satie's later years has yet appeared in print, though Gowers’ thesis’ does discuss Satie's compositional methods in the Nocturnes of 1919.

Mily Balakirev, the leader of the small group of Russian nationalist composers nicknamed by Vladimir Stassov the ‘moguchaya kuchka’ (the 'mighty handful'), was a controversial figure in his lifetime, and has remained so ever since. What was it that led him to take such seemingly odd actions as his retirement from music at the age of 35 ? What induced him to quarrel with nearly all his former friends and sympathisers? Was he, as Gerald Abraham put it, a flawed genius ? Why did the great works which were expected from him never materialise in anything like the numbers that all his friends hoped for? Why were they nearly all profoundly disappointed that one whom they knew to be an outstanding composer failed (in their opinion) to achieve in the works he did produce that greatness which he exuded in their presence, 'bewitching' them, as Rimsky-Korsakov put it, with his magnetism and hypnotising them with the ‘incomparable beauty’, as Stassov wrote, of his extemporisations at the piano?

Charles Koechlin showed little interest in silent films, and saw the film industry both at the beginning and end of his musical career as the worst aspect of the debased world of commercial art he so detested. According to his diaries, Koechlin first visited the cinema on i December 1912, and between this and his important visit to see Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel on 29 June 1933 he apparently went only eighteen times. Charlie Chaplin was the only silent film star that Koechlin really respected, for he represented eternal hope in misfortune, an escape from everyday problems into a world of fantasy, the ‘chimérique’ as Koechlin called it; all of this was relevant to his own existence as a composer. From the series of essays entitled Stars which he wrote in 1934 as a commentary to his Seven Stars' Symphony it is evident that Koechlin found silent film subtitles pretentiously banal, their stories conventional and superficial, often mutilating his favourite authors such as Jules Verne and Hans Andersen. With the arrival of the first sound films in the early 1930s, however, Koechlin suddenly found himself drawn to the cinema, and a curious, fascinating period of his life began, which brought to a head his inner conflict between the necessity to exist as a composer in real life despite serious financial difficulties, and his desire to escape into a private fantasy world in which he could compose. A passage from Tristan Klingsor's Scheherazade poem Le Voyage, which Koechlin set in 1922–23 and to which he often referred, summarizes his philosophy. The first phrase is the crucial one.

Much of the early history of the musical oratorio is still unknown. It seems that by the 1620s it was customary for religious confraternities to have music at their services before and after the sermon. In Rome the Congregation of the Oratorio, Philipp Neri's group which eventually met at the Chiesa Nuova, preferred music with Italian texts, whereas the Arciconfraternitàdel Santissimo Crocifisso, named after a cruxifix unharmed in a terrible fire at S. Marcello, preferred Latin texts. Apparently it is these two organizations, with their great emphasis on music and their financial support of trained musicians, which provide the background for the creation of the new musical genre and the impetus for its spread to other centres.

This article considers why septuple metres are so rare in Western music, despite being common in many other cultures. The scene is set by tracing the history of the septuple-time ‘meme’ (an idea that replicates by imitation) from ancient Greece through to Western art and popular music. The following sections consider the psychological, musical and environmental factors in more detail. The scarcity of septuple time in Western music is largely attributable to the development of the time signature, as a vertical conception of music evolved during the Renaissance. Subsequent evolution of the ‘Western music memeplex’ maintained septuple time on its periphery. Analysis of this interaction permits the construction of a meme-centred narrative of aspects of the development of Western music.