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.

The internationally known Londonderry Air carries the status of a cultural symbol of Ireland. Both its collector and its publisher claimed in 1855 that the music was very old, a belief which has passed into conventional wisdom. In 1934 and 1979 two writers cast doubts on the tune's age and suggested that its collector had more to do with the moulding of the tune than the process of tradition. Subsequently, doubts about the music have prevailed in academic circles but remained unexamined. This article queries the deductions of these writers and explores the musical origins and evolution of the Air. The methodology is historical and musicological. From an examination of collections of Irish traditional music evidence is presented in support of the tune's age and fashioning by tradition. The lost verses of a song known to have been accompanied by the tune in the nineteenth century are revealed as the likely original words to the music.

The focus of this study is an anonymous four-voice chanson of the early sixteenth century. On its own the piece is enigmatic at best, a densely contrapuntal arrangement of a simple monophonic song. The importance of Pastourelle jolie, however, transcends the apparent simplicity of these musical materials. Its ‘meanings’, according to this argument, are multiple, dwelling at once in the lyric traditions on which it draws, in its place in the history of French secular music around the year 1500, and in its important links with popular and aristocratic cultures of the day. This essay, therefore, reads and rereads this song in a series of related contexts. It dwells, for instance, upon the conventions of French pastoral poetry and the habits of composers who reworked the popular tunes with which songs like Pastourelle jolie are associated. But the piece has a highly specific meaning, too, one suggested by the only source to preserve this particular chanson and by the literary tastes of the ducal household that was its special audience.

Whereas earlier Italian baroque cantatas usually began arias in the key in which the preceding recitative had ended, there was an increasing tendency after 1700 to create a tonal disjunction between recitative and aria and to utilize for affective purposes the harmonic progression linking the last chord of the former to the first chord of the latter. Vivaldi, who almost invariably placed his arias in a contrasting key, was a leading exponent of this technique and employed a surprisingly large variety of key relationships at the recitative–aria interface. For illustration, the article draws on cantatas by Vinaccesi, Albinoni and Vivaldi.

The chanson de nonne presents stereotypical images of young women whose bodies and voices are trapped within the confines of a nunnery. Close examination of the architectural metaphors used to describe virginity and chastity in the Middle Ages allows comparisons to be made between the structures — metaphorical, musical and textual — that held fictitious nuns within the frame of the clerical imagination at the centre of thirteenth-century motet production.

The investigations which form the subject of the present communication had their origin in a practical source. It is conceived important that this should be understood, as many musicians regard the problem as a purely theoretical one, undeserving of practical attention. It was in taking part in the tuning of an organ that the effect of the ordinary equal temperament was first realised by the writer as a matter affecting musical sounds in practice, as distinguished from theory. It is the writer's experience that after the ear has once been attracted to this effect, it never fails to perceive it in the tones of instruments tuned in the ordinary way. Some tones show the effect more, some show it less. Among keyed instruments the worst effects are produced by the ordinary harmonium; next to this comes the full-toned modern grand piano, which is often unpleasant in slow harmony, especially if, as is generally the case, the temperament is not very uniform;∗ and the best tones, which show the effect least, are those of soft-toned pianos with little power, and the ordinary organ diapason-stops—especially those old-fashioned, sweet-toned diapasons, which are rapidly disappearing before the organ-builders of the present day. The constant perception of these effects served as an inducement to a study of the subject, pursued in the first instance with the practical object of the improvement of instruments, and afterwards also for the sake of the interest attaching to the theory developed.

The nature of harping before the general use of the pedal harp makes research peculiarly frustrating. Apart from bagpiping—which is to this day so secret a skill that most virtuosi will never reveal the true details of their reed-making and playing—no instrumental technique remained so long a craft, without a written literature. As far as the baroque era is concerned, there is the additional problem that the word harp covered a number of harps with different forms, techniques and functions. This preamble is not, like that of the music-hall juggler, to make the act seem so difficult that the sympathy of the audience is assured at the start, but simply to warn you that the information I have been able to collect on the subject of harps between roughly 1600 and 1750 is drawn from somewhat disparate sources and is rather unevenly spread, both geographically and chronologically.

The subject of this paper, “Beauty of Touch and Tone,” is one which however admirably it may be exemplified in the public performances of many—unhappily not all—of our leading artists, however conscientiously it may be inculcated by our most eminent teachers, is, in the playing and singing of too many of our amateurs, conspicuous only by its absence; and I can but think that, from the generality of the members of the musical profession, it does not receive that amount of attention which its importance demands, and which the rapid extension of musical education in some other directions might lead us to expect.

More than fifty years since a violoncellist, who was distinguished for his discernment and the desire to encourage rising talent, gave to a young composer, who, though making his mark, was still little known, and quite in the struggling stage, a commission to write some small works for the violoncello, with pianoforte accompaniment. The means of the violoncellist were but limited, and the honorarium was probably of no great amount, though I feel sure the principle was acted on that “the labourer is worthy of his hire.” But it was the young composer's first commission, and right proudly did he go home that day at having a commission to write anything at all on any terms. The works produced were twelve Ariettes and three Rondos, very fresh and charming, although little known now. It was from a business point of view the commencement of a long, honourable, and though chequered and marked by many disappointments which had to be patiently borne, an eminently successful career as a composer. He looked back to it and referred to it with grateful recollection of the timely recognition and kindly held out helping hand. The appreciative violoncellist passed away forty years ago, but the young composer lived on, with recognition of his powers gradually accorded to him, and with increasing honour and acknowledgment, not only by his own countrymen, but wherever music is known throughout the world. He also has passed away full of years, and by a pleasant, though melancholy co-incidence, by quite the reverse of what is sometimes termed the irony of events, the son of that violoncellist has been honoured with the commission to offer the first publicly spoken tribute to the memory of him whom his father was one of the first to recognise. The violoncellist was Henry Joshua Banister, remembered by very few here, but remembered with respect and honour; the composer was George Alexander Macfarren, and the tribute offered with great diffidence this evening is offered with a desire to be in sympathy with the old injunction—“Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not,” or, as one may justifiably amplify it, “forget not,” for he to whom my father was a friend, was a friend to me all along his professional course, and it is peculiarly grateful to me that in consideration of these facts I have had entrusted to me this task, one of the greatest professional honours ever conferred upon me.

The historians of music, in so far as they have discussed the relations of the art with the rites and doctrines of the Christian churches, have expatiated chiefly upon the works of such composers as Palestrina and J. S. Bach—to name two instances only: I mean those composers about whose greatness there can be no dispute, and whose claim to that reputation is based principally if not entirely upon works of an ecclesiastical character. If in the survey of any particular period it becomes necessary to mention composers of sacred music whose works are of a definitely inferior quality, that inferiority is generally ascribed to a want of true religious feeling either in the composers as individuals or in the age or the country in which they happened to live. It is the natural temptation of the musical historian to view these matters from a standpoint that is mainly aesthetic; but there is another aspect of the subject which must not be left out of account. If we turn to the ecclesiastical writers, we shall find that aesthetic and artistic considerations receive a very different treatment. The subject of music finds frequent mention in the early Christian Fathers, and although they recognize to the full the powerful influence which music may have upon the human mind, they are preoccupied with two aspects which to the pure musician have little significance. One of those aspects is the alleged moral danger of the art when not under the strict control of authority, and the other is its undoubted practical utility.

The subject with which I have to deal this evening is a very complicated one, and the time at my disposal is very short, so that I can, at the best, give you but a brief outline of it. I will, therefore, not lose a minute upon any preliminary remarks, but proceed at once with my paper.

In the British Museum (G. 40) are three part-books (bound together), containing six sonatas or suites, entitled: Suonate da camera a tre, doi Violini, Violoncello, e Cembalo, da Arcangelo Corelli da Fusignano, detto il Bolognese. Opera Quarta. Prima Parte. Nuovamente Ristampata. In Anversa, da Henrico Aertssens, Stampatore di Musica, all'Insegna del Monte Parnasso, 1692 Con Privilegio. The Cembalo part, with the figured Bass, is missing.

Bedecke deinen Himmel, Zeus,
Mit Wolkendunst,
Und übe, dem Knaben gleich,
Der Disteln köpft
An Eichen dich und Bergeshöhn;
Musst mir meine Erde
Doch lassen stehen,
Und meine Hütte, die du nicht gebaut,
Und meinen Herd,
Um dessen Glut
Du mien beneidest.

Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres
Unter der Sonn', als euch, Götter!
Ihr nähret kümmerlich
Von Opfersteuem
Und Gebetshauch
Eure MajestÄt,
Und darbtet, wÄren
Nicht Kinder und Bettler
Hoffnungsvolle Toren.

Far more attention has been given over the last century to the polyphonic compositions of Adam de la Halle and his plays than to his courtly chansons. Yet, if the number of surviving manuscripts is a guide, it was as a trouvère in the high courtly style, a courtly ‘maker’ in the tradition of la grande chanson courtoise, that his contemporaries chiefly valued him. His courtly chansons survive in eight main manuscripts and several lesser ones. In the manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fir 25566) containing his Collected Works, as it were, the chansons have pride of place and are notated in a different style from the polyphonic rondeaux and motets and from the monophonic refrains of the same manuscript. Their notation is the square, non-mensural notation analogous to that of contemporary Gregorian chant and traditional for vernacular monophonic song.

Mercure, a ballet in three tableaux with scenery and costumes by Pablo Picasso and choreography by Léonide Massine, created a scandal on a par with that of Parade (1917) when it was first performed at La Cigale Theatre in Montmartre on 15 June 1924 as part of the ‘Soirée de Paris’ season mounted by the wealthy Comte Etienne de Beaumont. Although Mount Etna, as it transpired, featured in the scenario but not in Picasso's stage sets, the première was certainly the scene of a volcanic eruption, a deliberate demonstration orchestrated by the Surrealists (led by the poet André Breton), who tried to drown Satie's music-hall score with their cries of ‘Long live Picasso! Down with Satie!’ The reasons behind this were complex and inseparable from Satie's enthusiastic support for the Dada movement and its founder, Tristan Tzara, from 1919 onwards. After the failure of the Congrès de Paris (convened by Breton to establish a Dada constitution and himself as leader), Satie took great delight in assuming the presidency of Breton's public trial at the Closerie des Lilas restaurant on 17 February 1922. Their enmity was further intensified by Satie's participation in the ‘happening’, known as La soirée du Coeur à barbe, which Tzara mounted at the Théâtre Michel on 6 July 1923. In what might be regarded as a dress rehearsal for Mercure, the newly founded Surrealists under Breton mounted a campaign in support of Picasso, which led to Breton being expelled by the police.

The French composer Raoul Laparra held an advanced knowledge of Spanish culture and music that was rare among French musicians. In his first opera, La habanera (Opéra-Comique, 1908), he tried to represent a Spain that was ‘different from Carmen’, focused on the ‘colder’ central region of Castile rather than southern, gypsy stereotypes. However, owing to several inconsistencies in his ideological agenda, and the weight of conventional representations of Spanish music and culture, Laparra rendered a contradictory image of Spain, which drew partly on the very southern and gypsy stereotypes he had intended to oust. Furthermore, the French critics’ lack of familiarity with Spanish traditions caused his project to be misunderstood. Those critics read La habanera in the context of French cultural struggles, mostly related to the definition of a national identity and the influence of Italian and German music.

Erik Satie is now thought of as a precursor and a man of ideas whose unconventional career took its direction from his continual rethinking of every aspect of contemporary music and aesthetics, largely as a reaction to nineteenth-century tradition and excesses. Eugénie Satie-Barnetche, whose ultimate aim for her stepson was a brilliant career as a pianist with an official seal of approval from the Paris Conservatoire, provided just one example of such a tradition, whilst her husband Alfred, the gifted and impulsive dilettante and a Romantic at heart, might well be seen as another. In fact, it is easy to conclude that Eugénie's academic approach helped to turn Satie into a left-wing revolutionary, whilst the uninspired salon music of both his parents made him determined to become a serious professional composer. But that is by no means the whole story, for Erik was very close to his father, even if he disliked his stepmother, and Alfred's love of the music-hall (whose songs he both wrote and published) was enthusiastically inherited by his son. Even after Satie abandoned his work as a cabaret pianist around 1911, the influence of this popular medium still ran as a thread through his later compositions. Similarly, he was often forced to resort to his stepmother's profession of piano teaching to make ends meet, and in the 1920s he delighted in moving in the exalted social circles that his aspiring stepmother had only dreamt about as she mounted her bourgeois musical soirées in the Boulevard de Magenta in the 1880s. Like Alfred and Eugénie, Satie also spent much of his composing time with short piano pieces that he hoped would reach a popular market, and dance music runs as another thread throughout his career, just as it did in their own compositions. Above all, Satie's parents provided domestic surroundings in which music played a substantial part, with the emphasis on the present rather than the past, though it remained for Satie alone to take music into the future.