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.

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.

The venerable founder of Soviet musicology Boris Asafiev aroused widespread dismay by his actions in 1948 after the promulgation of a Central Committee resolution condemning the USSR's leading composers: he not only acquiesced in his appointment as chairman of the Composers’ Union, but agreed to give a keynote address endorsing the resolution at its first national congress. His admirers have claimed that he must have been coerced into collaboration and that his address did not reflect his real views. The present essay re-examines the circumstances, arguing that the evidence of Asafiev's willing complicity is overwhelming. A close analysis of his keynote address reveals its contents to be wholly consistent with views that he had regularly expressed throughout his career, as one of the principal progenitors of an anti-modernist, ethnic nationalist and xenophobic strain in Soviet writing on music that was given forceful expression in the 1948 resolution.

In examining the relationship between Tchaikovsky and Balakirev, I shall investigate in some detail the influence upon the Moscow composer of the leader of the St Petersburg group or ‘mighty handful’ (which included, besides Balakirev himself, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov). Balakirev's group had been established before the St Petersburg Conservatoire of Music was founded by Anton Rubinstein in 1862; this, coupled with the fact that there were no textbooks on the theory of music in the Russian language, meant that Balakirev and his protégés had had no formal musical education, but had learned the technique of composition solely by studying the actual works of other composers, past and present. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, had been a student at the Conservatoire from the time of its foundation till 1865, his graduation exercise taking the form of a setting of Schiller's ‘Ode to Joy’ which was performed at the end of that year and was torn to pieces by Cui in a typically vituperative article. By the time this article had appeared early in 1866 Tchaikovsky had already moved to Moscow to take up a teaching post at the new Conservatoire there. According to Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev's group knew Tchaikovsky only as having composed a Symphony in G minor (his First) of which the two middle movements had been performed at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in St Petersburg in February 1867. As a product of the despised Conservatoire, they viewed Tchaikovsky askance.

It is doubtful if a subject more essentially English could have been chosen from the pages of musical history than that of the Viols. Although of foreign origin, they became so thoroughly naturalised in this country, and exercised so great an influence upon the history of English instrumental music, that I think no apology will be needed for my having selected them to be the theme of the present paper. I have written it in order to bring together all the information I could collect, and out of the whole to construct an account that may possibly be useful for purposes of reference. But before going further into the matter it will be well if I state my programme in more detail. By “Viols,” I mean the members of that family of bowed instruments with flat backs, sloping shoulders, and C-shaped sound-holes. They were instruments of the greatest possible importance, looked at from any point of view, and, in consideration of their worth in the artistic, historical and sociological aspects, they certainly merit detailed treatment. The period to which I propose to devote myself is that which lies between the date of our first authentic piece of documentary evidence and that at which the Viola da Gamba vanished before the conquering Violoncello. With Rebecks, Vielles, Fiedels and Gigues I shall have nothing to do; we have seen all too often into what misty tangles such research can lead the antiquarian. I wish to indulge in speculation as little as possible, and shall do my utmost to avoid propounding theories as to the ultimate source of the Viols. It will be best, I think, if we accept these instruments as accomplished facts and see what can be discovered of their English history. I am of opinion that a consideration of the Mediæval bowed instruments—interesting though it might be from the antiquarian and social points of view—would scarcely be worth the time spent upon it by the modem musician. It has not yet been conclusively proved—to my mind at any rate—that these instruments of the Middle Ages were the direct lineal ancestors of the Viols. A discussion of this question is not my purpose to-day; but I must say, in passing, that I do not believe the former had any more or less to do with the latter than had one style of architecture with another. I propose taking up my subject at the transition period when the music for these instruments ceased to be a mere duplication of a voice-part and became instrumental music pure and simple. That motley throng of fiddlers, jongleurs and troubadours, must go on fiddling their improvised accompaniments in the romantic borderland between legend and established facts; while we confine ourselves to the time when our beautiful soft-voiced Viols were making scientifically correct music of distinct artistic worth.

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.

When the subject of this address was decided upon, I had an idea that I might bring before the attention of this meeting many unfamiliar facts in connection with a most important, possibly the most important, branch of musical composition; but in the interim there has appeared the beginning of an article in Mr. Grove's Dictionary—which, although it is not yet signed, I guess from internal evidence to be the production of Mr. Rockstro—which anticipates many of the novelties I might have advanced, and sets those forth in the most clear, in the most interesting, and (I can say nothing short of the highest terms of eulogy) the most satisfactory and instructive light.

An opera so widely known and loved as La traviata may seem. a strange subject for musicological research. It was first performed in March 1853. From the following year onwards it enjoyed an uninterrupted reign as an international favourite. Throughout the nineteenth century it came second in popularity only to Il trovatore; while Verdi himself, when asked at one point which of his own operas he preferred, is said to have replied, ‘Speaking as a professional, Rigoletto, speaking as an amateur, La traviata’. In the period following his death many of Verdi's works now considered masterpieces sank for a while below the horizon—but not La traviata. Today it is not only Verdi's best-loved opera, but the most popular piece in the entire operatic repertory. What more could there be to find out about it?

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.’

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:

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.

In 1913, at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris, a controversial but highly successful ballet choreographed a circus-style pantomime to the music of Fauré's Dolly Suite. With its apparently incongruent relation of dance to music, the ballet displayed, as one reviewer put it, ‘criticisms in action’. This article investigates how we might conceive the production as an act of musical and cultural criticism, by examining its close relation with contexts such as early comic film, music-hall entertainment, the children's literature market, medical and anthropological theories, and surrealist thought. The ballet implicitly challenged conventional interpretations of Fauré's music as reflecting a particular perception of childhood – one which was rather too close to the sentimental attitudes vehemently dismissed in contemporaneous literature. The production was an important manifestation of an emergent understanding of the ‘childlike’ in early twentieth-century French culture – as a condition enlightened by irrationality, with important physiological traits.

In this article I argue that Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony assumes a pivotal role in advancing the romantically tinged narrative in Luchino Visconti’s film Senso (1954) through a politically recoded message. Visconti offers in this film a reflection upon the political climate in Venetia during the Risorgimento through the pre-eminent role of music. In particular, Bruckner’s music emphasizes the condition of the Venetians under Austrian rulers by dominating as an oppressive and overpowering force, not unlike the Austrian supremacy over the north Italians. Bruckner’s music, which relies on a decisively Wagnerian idiom, conveys throughout the film ideas of betrayal, on both the microlevel and the macrolevel. Such betrayals refer to the Christian Democracy, which excluded the Marxist partisans from governing post-war Italy. These events mirror, for Visconti, the failed revolution of the bourgeois-driven Risorgimento in the 19th century due to the idleness of the aristocracy. Interpreted through Visconti’s Marxist ideology, Bruckner is thus an indicator that the hegemony of the elite remained in place, unchanged and unaltered. As the sonic representative of the Austrian monarchy, it opposes the Risorgimento ideal of the bourgeois class and reassures the supremacy of the ruling class.

The study of liturgical organ music has often failed to take into adequate account its liturgical role. The following is an attempt to remedy this failure in respect of French classical organ music. It will reveal something of the nature and the extent of the use made of the organ in French churches and religious houses during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and thereby I hope create a perspective in which the extant literature of organ music of this period may be viewed. The essential nature of my inquiry is that it investigates the organ's role in the liturgy not primarily from the extant literature of organ music, but from the documents issued by the Church to regulate its role. Whilst these documents are prescriptive rather than descriptive, there can be no doubt that they reflect contemporary practices. Indeed, it is clear from a reading of some of them that prescription sprang directly from established usage. After reviewing the types of ecclesiastical legislation upon which we are dependent for our information, the main part of this article will be taken up by a close study of the role of the organ in various liturgical items belonging to the Mass and offices. A final section will discuss the alternation of polyphony with organ music.

Mr. Stephens.—Before the paper is read, I wish to make a few observations on the discussion which ensued on the very interesting paper which was read at the last meeting, On that occasion Mr. Whomes challenged the audience, and I accepted the challenge, to name the key of every piece that he played, the pianoforte being concealed from us. I put down on paper, and read afterwards, the key of every piece which he played, as they appeared to me at least, and the Chairman, who had sat at the pianoforte, came afterwards to the table and read out the key in which he had seen Mr. Whomes play. In every case the key in which Mr. Whomes had played on the pianoforte was a semitone higher than the one I had named. Now I am very anxious that any impression should be removed that I had been guilty of a failure on that occasion. It was simply that Mr. Whomes had, for the special purpose of his lecture, caused the pianoforte to be tuned a semitone lower; consequently, I was right in every instance, and Mr. Whomes has kindly come here on this occasion to corroborate what I say, and acknowledge that, for the purpose of his lecture, he was obliged to practise what, applied to my own particular case, would appear a deception, and he will acknowledge, I believe, that I was right in every instance as regards the true pitch, and when a selection from a Concerto of Beethoven in C minor was played, I said, not in C minor, but in B minor, and so it proved. After several of the audience were gone away, we compared the pianoforte with another one in the room, and found it was exactly what I have said, half a tone below pitch; therefore, whatever the position may be with regard to tone colourists, I wish to claim that I was in every instance correct in my judgment as to the key which was played.

In the autumn of 1564, the abbot of the Benedictine monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice recounted his experience on a recent journey from Rome to Venice of hearing the Lamentations sung during Holy Week in Perugia and Arezzo. It was a source of considerable annoyance to the abbot that, instead of the anticipated refined, devout and pious rendition appropriate to the liturgical occasion, the performance had been a confused uproar owing to the large number of participating singers and the extensive use of ornamentation, with the result that the mournful character of the Lamentations text had not been comprehensible. The direct consequence of the abbot's criticisms was the published compilation, by the anonymous monk to whom the observations had been made, of a comprehensive collection of polyphonic settings by the Benedictine monk Paolo Ferrarese of the constituents of the Holy Week liturgy. The editor stresses that the settings demonstrate the required qualities of piety, devotion, gentleness and smoothness, as well as clarity of text setting in which each verbal emphasis and nuance is realized.

This article addresses the early Italian reception of Verdi's Messa da Requiem (1874), premièred in Milan on the first anniversary of the death of the novelist Alessandro Manzoni. Previous literature has focused on issues of musical genre and the work's political implications (particularly its connections with Manzoni and with late nineteenth-century Italian revivals of ‘old’ sacred music). The article examines, instead, the curiously pluralistic concerns of contemporary critics, as well as certain aspects of Verdi's vocal writing, with the aim of destabilizing traditional dichotomies such as old/new, sacred/operatic, vocal/instrumental and progress/crisis. It argues for more broad-ranging political resonances of Verdi's work, suggesting that the negotiation of a variety of boundaries both in Verdi's music and in its contemporary discussion made the Requiem dovetail with wider cultural attempts to define Italian identity.

Throughout his life, Mahler was profoundly influenced by Beethoven's music. Many of his symphonies are modelled on those of his predecessor, and as a conductor much of his reputation outside the opera house arose from his interpretations of Beethoven. Mahler considered performance of the Ninth Symphony to be particularly challenging and, like others before him, he prepared his own versions of the score in an attempt to overcome some of the interpretative difficulties. It is the purpose of this article to examine these revisions with particular reference to Mahler's own working scores.

During the final editing and printing of his Treatise of the Natural Grounds and Principles of Harmony (1694) William Holder was engaged in a protracted correspondence. The letters to Holder were kept together and formed part of the founding collections of the British Museum, but they seem to have been little used. This neglect may represent the true verdict of history upon their merit, or it may be that they have never attracted the attention of a professional student of harmony qualified to assess their value. I am not such a one, and though, as it were by chance, I may turn over a little new grist for specialists, my set purpose is to describe the chances and changes through which one manuscript passed at the hands of its editor, publisher and printer during its transformation into a book at the end of the seventeenth century.

It is not generally realised how much Verdi suffered from atrocious productions of his early operas, how much he had this matter at heart in his middle years, nor what energetic measures he afterwards took to remedy things. At the beginning of his career scarcely any consideration was given in Italian theatres to dramatic effect. The opera existed for the singers; the singers themselves were convinced of this, and the public agreed with them. The composer had to adapt himself, and his work, to these conditions, and if he did not, then suitable adjustments were made by others for him.