This response highlights the cultural specificity of the ‘work-concept’ and questions the tripartite scheme of listening proposed by John Butt. It offers an alternative set of listening categories, and makes reference to the issues of early-modern class structures and the role of music in religious devotions. The argument is supported by critiques of historical vignettes that include the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's transcription of Gregorio Allegri's Miserere and Jean Joseph Marie Amiot's demonstration of French music to a Chinese audience in the mid-eighteenth century.

Focusing on two influential broadcasts staged for British television in 1963–4, this article traces transatlantic attitudes towards blues music in order to explore the constitutive relationship between race, spectatorship and performativity. During these programmes, I claim, a form of mythic history is translated into racial nature. Ultimately, I argue that blues revivalism coerced African American musicians into assuming the mask of blackface minstrelsy – an active personification of difference driven by a lucrative fantasy on the terms of white demand. I ask why this imagery found such zealous adherents among post-war youth, situating their gaze within a longer tradition of colonialist display. Subaltern musicians caught within this regime were nonetheless able to ‘speak’ via sung performances that signified on the coordinates of their own marginalization. The challenge for musicology is thus to heed the relational syncretism arising from intercultural contact while acknowledging the lived experience of African American artists unable fully to evade the preordained mask of alterity.

An abyss separates the research of Mahler from that of social historians on anti-Semitism in fin-de-siècle Austria and Germany. Mahler specialists tend to study the assaults he endured in terms of the centuries-old intolerance. Social historians, however, have pursued a different tack. They trace the liberal thought of the mid-nineteenth century, the legal emancipation of the Jews and its aftermath to the rise of ‘new’ anti-Semitism in the 1870s, centred in Vienna. The reasons why Mahler resigned as director of the Vienna Court Opera involve many more factors and subtleties, even concerning the expression of anti-Semitism. It is on these elements that this article attempts to shed light.

In 1058 Pope Stephen IX visited Montecassino, of which he had been made abbot only shortly before his elevation to the papacy the previous year. This German Pope was the former papal chancellor Frederick of Lorraine, the second northern abbot of Montecassino. On the occasion of this visit the Pope strictly forbade the singing at Montecassino of ‘Ambrosian chant’: ‘Tune etiam et Ambrosianum cantum in ecclesia ista cantari penitus interdixit.’

The Franciscan mission repertory in California, c.1770–1830, includes numerous collections of chant and polyphonic music. Scholars have assumed some direct connection with music used in Mexico, but this assumption remains difficult to prove on the basis of the surviving Mexican repertory, which is mostly associated with cathedrals. Chant and polyphonic settings from the Liturgy for the Dead in Californian sources are compared with those from Mexico. Mexican cathedral music, even in the 1790s, reveals connections with pre-Tridentine liturgical traditions; but the California repertory is based on different liturgical and chant traditions. This supports William J. Summers's hypothesis that polyphonic works in the California Missions are based on a peripheral tradition associated with the religious orders.

Michael Gallope’s book Deep Refrains is an in-depth study of the ineffable core of musical experience.4 But it engages ineffability without eliminating the pragmatic material of music’s economic, technological and even ethical mediations; and it posits a synergistic relationship between these realms. Gallope casts equal doubt on the determinism that construes music’s ineffability as wholly absorbed in mediation and on the vitalism that construes it as radically open. Framed by and theoretically grounded in the thinking of four twentieth-century philosophers (Ernst Bloch, Theodor W. Adorno, Vladimir Jankélévitch and Gilles Deleuze), the book deftly steers between the Scylla of music’s irreducible sensuous materiality (and its attendant invitation to decipherment) and the Charybdis of its elusive ineffability (and its attendant vanishing act in the face of decipherment). The book begins by reflecting on the fascinations and prohibitions of the harmoniaia in ancient Greek philosophy. Already here, Gallope revises the standard interpretation of these founding texts, demonstrating the ways in which Socrates, Glaucon, Aristotle and others in fact consider music as at once deeply mysterious and also strictly rule-governed. This conception of music’sperplexing precision is shown to be shared in ‘global’ contexts less available to music history, including (for example) the Ikhwan Al-Safa, an eleventh-century priesthood of Islamic scholars. At the same time, Gallope draws attention to the continuity between simplified taxonomies of the ancients and the instrumentalization of their axioms for contemporary engagements with affect, so rampant in the era of emerging neuromedia. Instead of recoiling from music’s indeterminacy (retreating to silence, say, or insisting on music’s unspeakable mystery), Gallope attempts to unpack the critical potential at the heart of auditory experience. On the other hand, he argues, such potential is not harnessed by marking the movements of music’s conceptual nomenclatures alone. Noting that music ‘never speaks like a language, nor is it entirely nonlinguistic’, Gallope seeks to account for the specificity of its ‘vague impact’.5 In other words, while there is a residue of conceptual mediation at work in all sonic encounter, music’s ‘sensory impact’ cannot be subsumed by that residue.

The history of the flat, sharp, and natural is not a dull record, but a tale full of stirring incidents. If my narrative does not succeed in engaging your interest, in stimulating your curiosity, and in now and then sending a thrill of excitement through you, I have failed to do justice to the noble subject of my choice. These remarks may lead you to suppose that I am going to speak of the human flats, sharps, and naturals of our profession. This, too, is, if not a noble, certainly an interesting subject; but it is not the one of which I intend to treat on this occasion. My subject is the origin, rise, and vicissitudes of the musical signs that raise and lower natural notes and restore raised and lowered notes to their natural state. No doubt most people would suspect such a history to be dull; but nothing is dull if only we go deep enough into it. The subject in question is certainly not an exception to this rule, which could be confirmed by the study of hundreds of the apparently dry details of our notation. It is with these details as with the humble constituents of society; with the flat, sharp, and natural as with those lowly neighbours of ours whose lives seem to us an unbroken level desert. How great is always our astonishment when chance allows us to get a glimpse of what is hidden behind the plain, prosaic exteriors, and we discover loves and hates, hopes and disappointments, joys and sorrows, aspirations, successes, and failures—in short, at least as much romance as in the lives of the great and mighty. Well, let us try to get a glimpse of what is hidden behind the plain exteriors of the humble friends now under consideration.

The Musical world celebrates this month the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Mozart's birth, and your Council, being desirous that the occasion should not pass entirely unnoticed by the Association, have done me the honour of asking me to read a paper to-day.

The recent publication of Heinrich Schenker's Das Meisterwerk in der Musik (1925-30) in a translation by Ian Bent, William Drabkin and others reminds us that in the highest modern traditions textual criticism and exegesis — editing and analysis — are inseparable. Much of Schenker's commentary on Mozart's Symphony in G minor, K.550, is devoted to isolating discrepancies between manuscript and edition, and some of his most fascinating analytical suggestions grow out of just this. Conversely, analytical strategies may have editorial consequences, and decisions taken by editors of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe have been challenged justly on stylistic grounds. If a passage occurs twice in a composition, for instance, does it have to be articulated in the same way on both occasions? And if there are differences in the articulations, what exactly do they tell us? Given the intricacy of the modern analytical debate over Mozart, such questions may not be answered by editors alone. Nor can editions be undertaken without reference to changing social circumstances: for composers in general have shown themselves more than ready to provide their own variants for different performing situations (again, Mozart's re-orchestration of the Symphony in G minor is a case in point). Indeed, in another field, scholars have asked that cultural issues should also influence editorial practice; these issues similarly require learning and sensitivity, and again deserve attention.

In October 1945, five months after the end of the Second World War in Europe, German critic Edmund Nick wrote the following in the American-sponsored Munich newspaper Neue Zeitung:

With no startling incidents or striking events to mark its course, the life of Sterndale Bennett will yet be always interesting to every one who likes to trace the progress and development of a truly artistic genius. It will be my endeavour to put before you plainly and simply the salient features of a career highly important in the history of musical art in England. The Bennett family were of Derbyshire orgin. Sterndale Bennett's grandfather, John Bennett, was born in the picturesque village of Ashford-in-the-Peak in 1750. Whilst still a youth he left for Cambridge, where he was appointed lay clerk at King's. He married, and had a numerous family. Robert, one of the elder sons, father of Sterndale Bennett, studied the organ and composition with Dr. Clarke. He became a musician of ability, and settled in Sheffield, where he took an excellent position and held the office of organist at the parish church. Amongst his many friends were Mr. William Howard and Mr William Sterndale, the latter a man of literary tastes, some of whose verses were set to music by Robert Bennett and published by subscription. In 1812 he married Elizabeth, daughter of James Donn, curator of the Botanical Gardens, Cambridge, and author of a classified catalogue of plants. He had two daughters and a son— William Sterndale Bennett—who was born on April 13, 1816, in Norfolk Row, Sheffield. Little Sterndale was not fated to know for long a father's care or a mother's love. He lost his mother when two years old, and his father died a year afterwards. Thus he was doubly orphaned in tender age. Happily his grandfather adopted him, and Mr. Howard took charge of the child until he could be sent to Cambridge. Here he was placed, when eight years old, as chorister at King's College, and had the educational advantages afforded to the boys of the various choirs.

Your Council have done me the honour of inviting me to read a paper before you this evening, and have suggested as a subject “Fugal Structure.” It gives me very great pleasure to accede to their request. I presume that the choice of the subject proposed to me is due to my having recently published a book on Fugue, in which I have ventured to express views differing considerably in some respects from those to be found in most other text-books; and I think I may probably take it that I am virtually invited to explain and justify the position I have taken up. If this be so, I most willingly accept the challenge; for my only object is the truth, and there is everything to be gained by full and free discussion. I fear, however, that for those who have already read my book on Fugue, the present paper will present but little novelty; for it will necessarily be little more than an abstract of the contents of my volume. There is one advantage at least; it will furnish an opportunity for thrashing the subject out thoroughly; and I think it very probable that the discussion which I hope will follow my paper may prove to be the most interesting and profitable part of this evening's proceedings. In order to leave as much time as possible for discussion, I shall endeavour to condense what I have to say, as far as I can do so without sacrifice of clearness.

An index reference in Donald Mitchell's study of Mahler's ‘Wunderhorn’ years seems to promise an appraisal of Mahler's debt to Liszt; on the page, however, an assumption precedes an exhortation to ‘serious research and documentation’. The debt is located in Mahler's ‘consistent and brilliant’ use of transformation of themes with particular reference being made to the ‘Faust’ Symphony. Elsewhere, Mitchell cites a trumpet tune from the finale of the ‘Resurrection’ Symphony and its subsequent transformation into a chorale as an example of ‘how closely Mahler had studied Liszt’. The species of transformation demonstrated is common in Liszt, mood and association being altered by radically changing the context while leaving melodic, harmonic and rhythmic contour relatively untouched. All of this, however, Mahler might have learned from Wagner, Smetana, Weber or many another composer of dramatic or programmatic music. Real documentation, in the form of letters or recorded comment, has always taken place in discussion of Mahler's debt to Liszt to the pursuit of technical and aesthetic parallels; Constantin Floras' study in progress is typical in that copious motivic and thematic cross-reference, and extensive documentation with regard to Mahler and Liszt individually far outweigh recorded discussion by Mahler of Liszt's personality and music.

Nearly all of Schumann's music contains or derives from words, whether as texts, titles, programmes or epigraphs. It is also famous for its structure of music qua mosaic, an aggregation of small-scale motifs. Now, surely these two basic facts about Schumann—his obviously verbal content, his obviously motivic form—may well be related? He works by way of motto-themes, I suggest, because that is literally what they are—mottoes turned into themes.

Ralph Vaughan Williams's father died when Ralph was two years old; his mother took her three small children to her own parents' house, Leith Hill Place, near Dorking, and brought them up much as she had been brought up herself. Besides the children, the household consisted of grandparents and a maiden aunt, and a staff of servants, mostly local people. Judging from a photograph of a group of them, none was young, and all were slightly eccentric.

The problem of range-finding—i.e., finding the distance of an object—is generally reduced to that of finding the direction of the object from each of a set of base points. Usually the object ranged is in motion, and the necessary measurements must be made rapidly.