The bicentenary of a major composer performs a variety of functions, some praiseworthy and rewarding, some trivial. First and foremost it is an occasion for reassessing his stature at the present time, and partly to this end it calls forth a vast number of performances of his music. Some of the performances are likely to be of unknown or little-performed works, and these, as well as the greater and more familiar pieces, are valuable material for making a second assessment of the composer, this time in relation to his contemporaries. It is from a study of that sort that we gain a surer picture of the circumstances that aided and that limited his achievement, and of the degree to which he was governed by the artistic conventions, habits and ideals of his age, even where he is recognized to have been at the same time the possessor of an original, indeed unique vision. But there is at least one more type of assessment that is surely appropriate to a bicentenary and not necessarily touched on by the other two: an assessment of his working methods. This is my justification for approaching a theme that might otherwise appear somewhat grandiose, namely a discussion of how Beethoven composed.

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 evidence now accumulating indicates that a true picture of English style has long been delayed by incredulous editorial pens.’ ‘Such evidence as we have … tends to the conclusion that accidentals should be added, in cases of difficulty, rather than subtracted.’ These two remarks, both made during the last decade, indicate the increasing concern over the correct performance of musica ficta. Both writers express degrees of dissatisfaction with the evidence available, although it is the interpretation of the evidence that has so far proved inconclusive, the evidence itself having remained largely unchanged for several years. The immediate question is whether the main body of evidence lies in the contemporary theoretical treatises or in the music as preserved in contemporary manuscripts; if it proves to lie in neither, then the problem must be regarded as insoluble. Yet the surviving treatises are written in (reasonably) plain English which must surely defy more refined interpretation than that to which they have already been subjected, and we are therefore left with the music. By carrying out a careful study of musica ficta as demonstrated in the accidentals which appear in the manuscripts of the period, we should be able to arrive at a series of rules which were well known by the contemporary musicians, and which should therefore form the basis for modern performance.

In real life as well as on the theatrical stage, the voice is just one out of the many external features of a person such as facial expression, gestures and general appearance which inform us about his inner character. In opera, because of its very nature, the singing voice assumes a more dominant role. In analogy to the visual mask of old (the persona in the original meaning of the word), which conveyed to the theatre audience the character of the dramatic role, the voice type allocated to an operatic part can be regarded as an auditory mask, which through its distinctive tone quality provides an impersonation of the operatic character. In the same way as the visual mask was intended to give a broad idea of the kind of character appearing on the dramatic stage, the auditory mask of the voice type is meant to be expressive of the character type represented by the operatic personage.

The term ‘third-stream music’, coined by the American composer Gunther Schuller in the 1960s, has by now been largely accepted by the musical world as a useful and valid description of a style which is a fusion between jazz and serious music. Admittedly, ‘serious’ is an unsatisfactory word to apply to music, carrying as it does the implication that jazz may not be serious, or that certain pieces by Haydn, Satie or Poulenc, for example, may not be worthy of the label; but within broad limits what is meant by ‘serious’ music will be readily understood. Even the term ‘jazz’, apparently self-explanatory, is not without a certain latitude of meaning: some will maintain that true jazz is negroid in conception, and will discount the contribution made by many white performers and composers. The limits of third-stream music, then, are ill-defined and open to contention: it can mean music played by a symphony orchestra with jazz soloists, or music played solely by a group of jazz musicians. Usually the basic requirement is that it will include musicians capable of interpreting and playing jazz.

Here are the complaints about Beethoven as a choral composer which are so well known, particularly by those of us who have sung in performances of these two giant works. And yet may we thank God for Beethoven's obstinacy! In this century we have slowly come of age: lay audiences accept and cherish these two works, and responsible musicians consider the adequate preparation of the music, so clearly understood by Berlioz over a hundred years ago, as a sacred duty. Sopranos in particular, on whom Beethoven makes by far the greatest demands, have learned a combination of breath control and neutralized vocal sounds to sustain, for example, successive high B flats, so that passages like ‘sedes ad dexteram’ or ‘et vitam venturi’ in the Missa Solemnis are sung without that lessening of ‘volume and energy’ lamented by Berlioz.

A problem that continually makes its presence felt in the medieval field is that of the use of instruments in church. The sources of sacred music offer little internal evidence, and for a variety of reasons the evidence of the literary and visual arts must be treated with reserve. Many of us would now probably subscribe to F. Ll. Harrison's view that ‘… there is no evidence that any instruments but the organ were normally played in church. …’ It is with the exceptions implied by the word ‘normally’ that this paper is concerned. Documentary evidence shows that other instruments were indeed played in church—that has never been disputed. Granted that these occasions were in some way exceptional, we must set out to answer certain questions: in what circumstances were other instruments used ?—what instruments were involved?—and what traditions, if any, are represented by these apparently isolated occasions? It is the attempts to answer the last of these, especially, that have caused disagreement in the past.

Ernest Bloch is one of the enigmatic figures in twentieth-century music. He neither joined nor founded any school of composition (though a number of important composers in the United States today were his pupils); he was much acclaimed during periods of his life, especially in the 1920s and 30s; but since the last World War his popularity has suffered a steady decline, with but rare flashes of resuscitation. Though born in Switzerland in 1880, and spending much of his creative life (until his death in 1959) in the USA, it is as the ‘Jewish composer’ that he is most often acknowledged. This has in turn caused a reaction in the minds of those who feel that Bloch's appeal, so far from circumscribed, is universal. But universality depends upon quality rather than heredity; ‘Jewishness’ and universal appeal are in no way mutually exclusive.

This well-known passage by Francis Bacon might be regarded as an appeal for common sense in the instrumentation of Elizabethan and Jacobean music. The principle of avoiding combinations which do not blend may still be applied today, but, as Bacon goes on to say, ‘for the Melioration of Musicke, there is yet much left (in this Point of Exquisite Consorts) to try and enquire’.

Jan Vořišek is an oddly shadowy figure in musical history. Admirer and intimate of Beethoven, friend of Schubert—yet exponent of Bach fugues and continuo realisations for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century compositions; on the one hand a war-office clerk, on the other organist to the Imperial Court—his life is made up of such contrasts. He was born into the generation that saw the rise of Czech cultural nationalism, but took no part in it. Indeed, he is almost the last of the long line of emigré Czechs (the Stamitz family, the Bendas, Mysliviček, Vaňhal, Reicha and others) who practised with distinction the international musical style. He was a virtuoso pianist and a popular, even fashionable, figure in the salons of the Viennese musical dilettanti, yet he left some compositions of such excellence that one marvels that their revival has been so long delayed. The more one knows about his career, the further one seems to travel from Jan Voříšek as a person.