In 1585 a set of Vesper psalms for four voices by Paolo Isnardi, a choirmaster at the cathedral and court of Ferrara, was brought out by the printer Giacomo Vincenzi. In the dedication to the abbot of Santa Maria della Charità in Venice, Vincenzi states that the psalms are composed ‘con nova maniera di consonanza, over come dicono falsobordone’ (‘in a new style of consonance, or, as it is called, falsobordone’). Falsibordoni had been published before, for in Isnardi's Vesper psalms for five voices, printed in 1579, wordless falsibordoni in all eight tones were appended at the end of the partbooks, obviously designed as easier alternatives to the conventional contrapuntal settings; but with the 1585 volume, a publication, for the first time, was devoted exclusively to examples of the style, with specific verbal underlay for each voice (ex. 1). The dedication to the abbot probably indicates an intended market of non-professional choirs made up of resident clerics or musically less-proficient monks and juvenile novices, who preferred some variation to the unison plainsong recitation of the Office: it is significant that the falsibordoni are scored for four voices, as opposed to the ubiquitous five-voiced psalm settings of the late Renaissance.

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.

The main sources of sketches for Elgar's Second Symphony are the two Stuart-Wortley volumes in the care of the Elgar Birthplace Trust. Each is bound in black calf-skin, and measures 26 by 31.5 cm. They are entitled as follows, firstly, (S-W/B):

Writing a year before Mozart died, Joseph Ritson prefaced the earliest attempt to summarize the history of medieval English song with the comment:

Nearly two hundred years later it is still necessary to begin any such survey on a note of extreme caution and with a declaration that the picture must be built on a series of widely separated stepping-stones—or more precisely, on a scattered group of stones peeping up from the river and perhaps never intended to pave a way across. Perhaps I may continue the river metaphor for a moment by saying that a landing place is now fairly solidly established on the far bank thanks to the recent publication by John Stevens of the Fayrfax Manuscript (GB-Lbm Add. 5465), dating from around 1500, and of the English songs in the Ritson Manuscript (Add. 5665), some of which must have been copied around 1470. Further, a little way up the river, there is a more or less continuous path across provided by the English carol tradition, also fully published by John Stevens and surviving in a series of five manuscripts that are miraculously fairly even in their chronological and stylistic spacing over the years from 1430 to 1500.

Though the period of Handel's visit to Italy—1706 to 1710—has rightly been regarded as crucial to the formation of his mature style, study of the nature and extent of the development has been hindered by incorrect chronology of the music of the Italian period. Furthermore, assessment of the music written before 1706—essential to an appreciation of the effects of the Italian visit—has been even more difficult because of over-ready acceptance of the authenticity of many supposed early works. The research of the last twenty years has brought to light much new information about Handel's work in Italy, establishing the dates and circumstances of composition of a number of major works. Associating musical features with independently determined dates not only points out the course of the composer's development, but also allows dates to be assigned on stylistic grounds when there are clear musical affinities with datable works and other evidence is lacking. The limited compass of this paper precludes travelling far down any of the paths the new research has opened up, and is mainly concerned with the large-scale works; but it may suggest a way of approach. As the main achievements of the most recent work have yet to be incorporated in any Handel biography, a summary will be worthwhile.

The death, on 14 August 1587, of Guglielmo Gonzaga Duke of Mantua and Monferrato, heralded a sudden shift in the political, economic and artistic policies of the Duchy. His successor, Vincenzo, had notions of a Mantuan role in the peninsular greatly disproportionate to the size of its territory and population, and it was undoubtedly an important part of his conception that the Gonzaga should be seen as patrons of the arts on a scale compatible with these ambitions. During the 1580s, Vincenzo had conspicuously preferred the hedonistic atmosphere of Ferrara and Florence to the Counter-Reformation gloom of his father's court, and in the years immediately after his accession began to import cultural fashions from these other centres. One important change in the musical establishment was the formation, probably completed by April 1589, of a permanent ensemble of virtuoso singers on the Ferrarese model. Another was the rejuvenation of theatre and spectacle at court, culminating in the presentation of opera and ballet during the carnival seasons of 1607 and 1608 and the wedding celebrations of the latter year. The following considers one aspect of this revived interest in music and spectacle, the attempted productions of Battista Guarini's Il pastor fido during the 1590s. The first section deals with the problems surrounding the gestation of the play, the attempted productions and the surviving music. The second considers some of the novel aspects of that music in relation to other traditions.

This paper summarises the progress of my work on the Henrician set of musical partbooks belonging to Peterhouse, Cambridge. These books will be best known by their old catalogue numbers as Peterhouse manuscripts 40, 41, 31 and 32; recently, however, they have been reclassified as Peterhouse manuscripts 471–474. Along with all of the Peterhouse music manuscripts they are now kept in Cambridge University Library, where, because of their increasingly fragile condition, they are not normally made available to readers. I should like to record my thanks to the Librarian of Peterhouse for permission to examine and handle the partbooks, and to the College Archivist for allowing me to consult the account rolls, registers and other documents of the college.

The first important centre of viol making and viol playing in the late fifteenth century was the Mediterranean city of Valencia, capital of the southernmost province of the Kingdom of Aragon. From Valencia the viol quickly spread to nearby parts of the Aragonese kingdom such as the Maestrazgo region, the provinces of Aragon and Catalonia, and the islands of Majorca and Sardinia. Late fifteenth-century paintings of the Madonna and Child serenaded by music-making angels clearly reflect the growing popularity of the viol throughout this area of the western Mediterranean. One of the earliest depictions of the viol, probably dating from the 1470s, appears in the work of a Catalan artist active in a northern district of the province of Valencia known as the Maestrazgo. Photographs of this painting (plate 1) show it to have been in a very poor condition, but it has since been restored (perhaps even completely repainted) and can now be seen in the church of San Felíu just above the town of Játiva.

What lover of eighteenth-century music, hearing Burney's characterisation of the Mannheim orchestra as ‘… an army of generals, equally fit to plan a battle, as to fight it’, or upon reading Schubart's description of that group,

has not been filled with curiosity to hear such an ensemble? Recently a few performing groups have begun to try to satisfy that curiosity. We are reminded of the pioneering nature of such undertakings by recalling that a respected music dictionary defines ‘Performance Practice’ as ‘the study of how early music, from the Middle Ages to Bach, was performed and the many problems connected with attempts to restore its original sound in modern performance.

It is a privilege for an outsider to be allowed to address a distinguished body of professional musicians. But such excursions across the conventional frontiers of academic disciplines are hazardous. Even if we escape the trammels of professional jargon, it is difficult to avoid an appearance of futility or of arrogance: a posture of such humility as to offer nothing worth notice, or one of such pretension as to incur resentment from specialists who rightly distrust intrusion by amateur busybodies. I have therefore prefaced this paper with a quotation chosen, insidiously, for its modesty and the distinction of its author. But it would be less than honest to pretend that I entirely share its pessimism. Not that Tawney ever doubted the existence of a ‘connexion between the quality of intellectual activities and the dull facts of social systems’. He was determined, however, to trounce those who found ‘in infallible formulae of universal application a painless alternative to thought’.