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Lost in translation? Tracing Lullian tunes in Edward Ravenscroft’s The Citizen Turn’d Gentleman (1672) Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2024-09-09 Hanna Walsdorf
In late 17th- and early 18th-century London, English versions of the comédies-ballets by Molière and Lully were received with great applause. Yet translators had necessarily converted the rhythm, rhyme and song of the French plays, which is why most of Lully’s tunes seem to have been lost in translation, replaced by newly composed songs. Focusing on Edward Ravenscroft’s The Citizen Turn’d Gentleman
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Music in a vanished kingdom: medieval polyphony in the Teutonic Order state in Prussia Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2024-08-22 Paweł Gancarczyk
The state of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, or Ordensstaat (1228–1525), belongs to those ‘vanished kingdoms’ which—devoid of any contemporary heirs—remain on the margins of historical narratives about music. The aim of this article is to describe polyphonic practices in medieval Prussia on the basis of archival and musical sources. Although the information they contain is of a fragmentary character
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More on the scoring of Josquin’s Huc me sydereo and the manuscript St Gallen 464 Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2024-07-30 Brett Kostrzewski
The motet Huc me sydereo by Josquin des Prez appears in both five- and six-voice versions, having led scholars to debate which version is authentic to the composer’s original conception. The authoritative New Josquin Edition presents the motet in its six-voice version; in the critical commentary, editor Bonnie Blackburn defended it as Josquin’s original. More recently, Joshua Rifkin has demonstrated
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‘A knowledge easely taught, and quickly learned’: learning to sing in Byrd’s England Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Samantha Arten
William Byrd published his famous eight ‘Reasons briefely set down by th’auctor, to perswade every one to learne to sing’ in his 1588 Psalmes, sonets and songs. The most important reason to learn to sing, according to Byrd, is that ‘it is a knowledge easely taught, and quickly learned, wher there is a good Master, and an apt Scoler’. The ‘knowledge’ of which Byrd speaks is not only the mechanics of
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John Sheppard (c.1514–1558/59) at Oxford and the Chapel Royal: exculpation and clarification Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Roger Bowers
The received biography available for the English composer John Sheppard (c.1514 – late 1558 or early 1559) is amenable to clarification at a number of points. He was employed as Master of the Choristers at Magdalen College, Oxford, for just a single spell, September 1543 to early 1548. The available evidence suggests that he proceeded thence directly to admission to the Chapel Royal. He had no further
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The wreck of the Gloucester revisited Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-16 Peter Holman
The wreck of the frigate Gloucester off Norfolk on 6 May 1682 has always figured in histories of the Restoration period; it was taking James, Duke of York (the future James II and VII) to Edinburgh to collect his wife Mary of Modena and his daughter Princess Anne after his years of exile in Scotland. It has long been known that there were royal musicians on board, two of whom were drowned, though interest
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‘Well sorted and ordered’: sociable music-making and gentlemen’s recreation in the era of Byrd and Weelkes Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-09 Linda Phyllis Austern
Sociable music-making from notation had become a marker of status by the time of Byrd’s and Weelkes’s printed anthologies of part-songs. However, there was ambivalence about its suitability for gentlemen in a time when ideas of manhood were undergoing redefinition and when both gender and class were reinforced through display. Men of wealth and leisure were encouraged to balance musical recreation
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John Sheppard and the Ewens: a closer look Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-02 Jason Smart
The known musical career of John Sheppard spans just 15 years. In 1543, when he was probably still in his late twenties, he was appointed informator choristarum of Magdalen College, Oxford. At his death in 1558, at about the age of 43, he was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, perhaps having been appointed on leaving Oxford in 1548. A recent article draws attention to the fact that, early in the reign
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A response to Joshua Rifkin (‘Singing nuns? More on the story of Verona 761’) Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-18 Laurie Stras
A response to Joshua Rifkin’s reconsideration of the early history of Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, Ms. dcclxi. As well as addressing Rifkin’s objections to my hypotheses, I discuss the motivation behind my scholarship, and some of the choices I make in presenting it.
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An ingenious musical machine from the imagination of Leonardo da Vinci Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Walter Chinaglia
This article is based on a talk I was asked to give during the conference Leonardo, la musica, la scena (Leonardo: the music and the scene) held at the Accademia di Brera, Milan, in November 2019. On that occasion I was able to illustrate my wooden reconstruction of Leonardo’s portative organ, as illustrated on fol.76r of the codex Madrid II. In the article I present and analyse Leonardo’s drawings
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Nec doctum satis: humanist translation and English recreational song Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-12 Joseph M Ortiz
Studies of the literary dimensions of English Renaissance madrigals frequently cordon off these works from non-musical forms, such as the prosodic experiments being carried out by humanist poets or the humanist practices of literary translation and imitation. Conversely, studies of humanist translation in England almost never consider recreational song, instead focusing exclusively on more ‘serious’
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Singing nuns? More on the story of Verona 761 Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-06 Joshua Rifkin
Considers recent arguments about the choirbook Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, Ms. dccxli, and a convent in the city where it resides.
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Performer, composer and impresario: Thomas Vincent Jr. (c.1723–1798) and the oboe in London, 1748–1768 Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-06 Blake Johnson
Eighteenth-century writings about the oboe in London tend to focus primarily on two performers: Giuseppe Sammartini (1695–1750) and Johann Christian Fischer (1733–1800). As Sammartini died in 1750 and Fischer arrived in London only in 1768, this leaves much uncertain about the period of time which separated them. One of the leading oboists in the years following Sammartini’s death was Thomas Vincent
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King George III and the ‘Smith Collection’ of Handel manuscripts Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-06 Donald Burrows
The run of morocco-bound manuscript scores of Handel’s oratorios and church music from the Royal Music Library, named the ‘Smith Collection’ by William Barclay Squire in 1927, was assembled as a set for King George III in the early years of his reign. Some of the volumes have year-dates for copying from the period 1766–70, but the sequence also incorporates earlier volumes that originated from the
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Aesthetic expression an das Clavier: performing character in the keyboard music of C. P. E. Bach Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-05-29 Kimary Fick
The expression and interpretation of music in the North German Enlightenment was a primary concern of amateur musicians. Around the mid 18th century, influenced by the nascent discipline of aesthetics, literature on the arts and music exhibited a shift towards a psychological approach to expression rather than a rhetorical one. This article examines the notion of ‘character’ as used in aesthetics,
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Benedicamus Domino tropes in the Birgittine Order: embellishing everyday liturgy Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Karin Lagergren
A remarkable feature of the Birgittine monastic Order is its daily use of tropes for the embellishment of an exclusively monophonic liturgy. Ferial tropes were sung in both Mass and Office and their purpose was to highlight the Marian devotion that was central to the Order’s spirituality. In the Birgittine sisters’ ferial Office liturgy, the so-called Cantus sororum, the Benedicamus Domino was a notable
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‘Magnificence of promises’: novelty instruments in concert in Britain, c.1750–1800 Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Rachael Durkin
In this article I explore the occurrence and use of novelty musical instruments in concert in the second half of the 18th century, arguing that these instruments were used as a means of self-promotion for the performer, and in some cases were intrinsically linked with their identity as immigrant musicians in Britain. I start by examining music marketing in the 18th century, then consider what novelty
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An alluring sight of music: the musical ‘courtesan’ in the Cinquecento Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Laura Ventura Nieto
The figure of the courtesan features in many literary and artistic productions of the Italian Cinquecento. The term ‘musical courtesan’ has been widely used to describe several portraits produced in the first half of the 16th century representing beautiful young women (belle) in different attires playing the lute. This article problematizes the notion of the ‘musical courtesan’ and argues instead that
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Benedicamus Domino as an expression of joy in Christmas songs of the Devotio moderna Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Manon Louviot
Christmas, as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, is a central and joyful feast of Christian worship. In medieval and early modern Europe, this translated into a rich musical tradition, of which Christmas songs were a significant part. Song collections from the Devotio moderna, a spiritual movement that spread in the Low Countries and Germany during the 15th and 16th centuries, are an important
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‘With the base Viall placed between my Thighes’: musical instruments and sexual subtext in Titian’s Venus with musician series Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Malachai Komanoff Bandy
Late in his career, Titian (and his workshop) treated the Venus with musician theme in a series of five similar paintings of unconfirmed patronage. All show the goddess in the same reclined pose, but the musician at her feet transmutes over the course of the series from organist to lutenist, and subtly changes position in the frame. Recently, the paintings and their thematic origins have elicited much
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Madrigal or canzona? Performing intellectual and sensual pleasure in Jacopo Tintoretto’s Women making music Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-11 Barbara Swanson
The vague mythological context of Jacopo Tintoretto’s Women making music (after 1566, Dresden Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister) has puzzled scholars, resulting in little consensus regarding the allegorical meaning of the work. H. Colin Slim, for example, emphasized the orderly disposition of bodies in the painting, suggesting a musical-cosmological reading of the work. Liana de Girolami Cheney, on the other
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Poor Clares, rich in music: unique polyphonic Benedicamus Domino settings from southern Polish convents in the late 13th and early 14th centuries Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2023-01-28 Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett
Under the reign of Duke Bolesław V, Poland lived through a period of cultural prosperity with several newly founded monastic centres and productive scriptoria. Particularly important were two convents of the Order of St Clare, founded by the duke’s sister, the blessed Salomea, and his wife, St Kinga. Both cloisters were led in the spirit of royal foundations and were important repositories of medieval
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Will she or won’t she? The ambivalence of female musicianship in two paintings by Bernardino Licinio (1489–1565) Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-12-17 Chriscinda Henry
This article examines the depiction of sexual proposition, the corruption of female virtue and the ambivalent allurements of secular music in a pair of 16th-century Concert paintings by the Venetian artist Bernardino Licinio. It argues that Licinio’s multi-figure concerts, centred on the music-making of young women, both parody and invert the classical elegiac theme of the pauper amans, the impoverished
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Violin-making in Rome, 1700−1830: new archival investigations Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-04 Patrizio Barbieri
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Roman production in the lutherie sector focused almost exclusively on plucked-string instruments: in the numerous workshop inventories that have come down to us, the various members of the viola family are very rare indeed, while violins are almost entirely absent. Again in Rome, the profession of violin-maker (‘violinaro’) starts to appear only in the second quarter
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The Chevalier de Quincy: an officer and his musical passe-partout Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-04 Julie Anne Sadie Goode
In common with many military officers at the turn of the 18th century, Joseph Sevin kept a journal that chronicled army life on and off the battlefield. His memoirs, covering the years 1697 to 1713, are of particular interest because they reveal his pleasure in making music with his fellow officers and the women whom he met socially. While boasting of only modest attainments, the Chevalier de Quincy
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O splendor gloriae: Taverner or Tye? Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-04-02 Francis Knights,Mateo Rodríguez,Pablo Padilla
Abstract The five-part votive antiphon O splendor gloriae is attributed to Taverner in two important sources, but to both Taverner and Tye in the other two 16th-century sources. Joint works of this kind in classical music are extremely rare, and common authorship is difficult to assess. In this case, scoring and many other musical features are consistent, but the style of each half seems different
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Father Hermann Kniebandl (1679–1745), lutenist, composer and scribe from the Cistercian Abbey of Grüssau, Silesia Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-02-24 Joachimiak G.
AbstractThis article is concerned with one of the largest surviving collections of 18th-century lute tablature manuscripts, from the Cistercian abbey of Grüssau in Silesia (now Krzeszów, Poland). The collection consists of 15 volumes of manuscript lute tablature, containing more than 2,000 pieces for Baroque lute. I focus on a group of otherwise unknown compositions from these sources, all connected
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Music for St Cecilia’s Day from Purcell to Handel Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-12-03 Herissone R.
WhiteBryan, Music for St Cecilia’s Day from Purcell to Handel, Music in Britain, 1600–2000 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019), £45
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Sounds powerful Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-12-03 Inniger J, Vallat L.
‘Between court and city: soundscapes of power in East and West (15th–17th centuries)’, Institute of Musicology, University of Bern, 5 February 2021
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Music for keyboard and consort Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Ables M.
This review considers five new releases of instrumental music dating from the early 16th century through to the beginning of the 18th. The recordings are mostly secular music for either viol consort or keyboard, each with a different approach to programming and organizing the repertory.
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Mozart Englished Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-01-20 Everist M.
Mozart’s concertos for piano have always been subject to claims that they are being performed in circumstances that would have been familiar to the composer. ‘Conducting from the keyboard’ is a slogan rarely far from performances and recordings of this repertory, and the practice is occasionally claimed to reflect how Mozart would have performed his music himself. Although Murray Perahia was genuinely
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A proper farewell to Beethoven’s 250th; balm for the dispirited listener’s soul Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-01-20 Schaefer A.
I have to admit that in terms of listening materials, an assortment of early-, middle- and late-period Beethoven works was not what my soul was craving when these CDs arrived at my doorstep. Back in 2019 we joyfully prepared for the celebration of what would have been Beethoven’s 250th birthday year. In normal times, I would have sat in my favourite section of Symphony Hall listening to these masterpieces
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Josquin at 500 Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-01-20 Fitch F.
The Josquin quincentenary has occasioned fewer recordings than one might have anticipated pre-pandemic, but this batch nicely balances current trends: on the one hand a certain standard way of presenting Renaissance polyphony (and more specifically, Masses) courtesy of the Tallis Scholars; on the other, four recordings that engage with different facets of his 16th-century reception history as expressed
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Bach’s keyboard concertos on harpsichord and piano Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2022-01-20 Webber G.
In his captivating film The Creative Performer (1960), sponsored by the Ford Motor Company and now available on YouTube, Leonard Bernstein discusses the problem of interpretation in Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto no.1 in D minor, bwv1052, performed in concert by the New York Philharmonic with Glenn Gould at the piano. Bernstein helpfully gives illustrations of extremes of performance style: the opening
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‘Your Muse Remains Forever’: memory and monumentality in Elizabethan manuscript partbooks Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Daisy M Gibbs
The presence within Elizabethan music collections of antiphons and motets with explicitly Catholic themes has long been a source of interest and historiographical argument. The old theory that the inclusion of such pieces reveals covert Catholic beliefs among early modern collectors has been undermined by recent historical research, and it is now more frequently taken as evidence of their education
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Mourning sickness: the musical birth of ‘Barbara Allen’ Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Ross W Duffin
In his encyclopaedic 1966 study, The British broadside ballad and its music, Claude Simpson regretted the absence of tune directions for ‘such familiar traditional ballads as “Barbara Allen”’. Indeed, although it is by far the most collected traditional song in England, Scotland, Ireland and North America, and versions of its lyric date back to the 17th century, the tune most people know for ‘Barbara
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Playing finger cymbals in the Roman Empire: an iconographic study Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-11-30 Audrey Cottet
Finger cymbals, played with one pair in each hand like castanets, are iconic of the Middle Eastern ‘belly’ dance, which has been represented in numerous pictorial works and photographs since the 18th century. Middle Eastern dancers show that it is possible to dance while using two small cymbals in each hand, attached to two different fingers with straps from the cymbals’ holes. Starting from the observation
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Melismas in the Speculum musicae Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-11-19 Thomas Forrest Kelly
Eight melodies, one for each of the ecclesiastical modes, are given as optional additions to responsories and other chants in the 14th-century Speculum musicae of Jacobus of Liège. The melodies have paired phrases resembling those of contemporaneous dance music. The paucity of surviving melodies of this sort, and their almost exclusive association with secular music, make this series particularly fascinating
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Leipzig after Bach Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-09-22 Tanya Kevorkian
Jeffrey Sposato, Leipzig after Bach: church & concert life in a German city (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), £53
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The Underworld of Orpheus’s music dramas Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-09-09 Rachel Carpentier
In his History of Western music, Richard Taruskin describes the Orpheus myth as the perfect humanist opera. It is no small wonder that early 17th-century experimentation with music drama seized so voraciously on the tale of the musician Orpheus and his beloved Eurydice, nor that musical settings of the story continued well beyond the Baroque era. But while the history of Orpheus and opera are deeply
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Whispers, worms, wildfire and wanderers Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-08-31 Catherine Groom
‘To civilize and inspire [folk tunes] with all the native Gallantry of the SCOTISH Nation’ was Geminiani’s concern, but the six members of US-based Makaris (after makar (pl., makaris), the name given to a royal court troubadour in medieval Scotland and today used to describe a Scottish bard) take a rather earthier and more exciting view of the Scottish national character on Wisps in the dell (New Focus
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‘For the Lovers and Practitioners of [English] Consort [and Court]-Musick’ Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-29 King A.
The quote above, slightly adapted to suit the range of recordings discussed here, is drawn from the preface to Matthew Locke’s Little Consort of Three Parts, published in 1656. A simple salutation, it reveals something of the 16th- and 17th-century enthusiasm for chamber music that a host of esteemed ensembles and individuals today, such as Fretwork, Phantasm, the Rose Consort of Viols and Jordi Savall
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Vocal embellishment in 18th-century Naples: solfeggio patterns in pre-composed cadenzas in sacred pieces by Gennaro and Gaetano Manna Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-21 Eric Boaro
The last 20 years have been crucial for 18th-century musicology. Robert Gjerdingen’s studies have focused on a key feature of 18th-century music that has completely changed our understanding of the Baroque repertory: schematic thinking. Yet discovering its traces still constitutes a demanding task. This article aims to contribute to and broaden this field of research by analysing a particular group
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On screen and stage: a performer’s perspective on life in early music, 2020–21 Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-20 Mulroy N.
The life of a performing musician in the UK over the last 18 months has been something of a rollercoaster. Since the abrupt shutdown of March 2020, there have been various, often confusing stages of tentative reopening, some sense of a brave new world, alongside frustrations, instability, and a heightened awareness of the fragility of even the best-laid plans. It is natural, then, first to mention
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Against the odds: pandemic early choral music Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-20 Goursaud C.
Choral music and those who make and listen to it have had, to say the least, a rough ride over the past year and a half. Successive lockdowns have deprived audiences and congregations of the unique and uplifting experience of hearing live voices in consort, amateur choirs and choral societies have been unable to provide their usual opportunities for fellowship and recreation, while professional singers
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Bach for harpsichord, piano and harp Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-20 Banks J.
Bach’s keyboard music represents what is perhaps some of the best-loved Baroque repertory, known as piano music to countless young students before they rediscover it in its original context. The seven collections reviewed here duplicate very few pieces and nearly all of the music has been widely recorded before, on both harpsichord and piano, a testament to the enduring appeal as well as the sheer
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An embarrassment of polyphonic riches Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-19 Harris S.
A cold wind blows. We are confronted by a man’s eyes, grey-blue, open ominously wide. The curling white fingers of his breath crisp the black air, and soon we are able to make out that he is dressed in hunting pink. Thus begins the recent short film of Janequin’s La chasse, one of the more unconventional of the eight items under review here. While this cinematic offering certainly exemplifies the chameleon-like
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From Antico to Zipoli: Listening to three centuries of Italian keyboard music Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-19 Walden D.
This batch of recordings charts the evolution of (mostly) Italian keyboard literature between the 16th and 18th centuries. Listen closely, however, and you will find that they trace more than the influence of ‘great composers’ over this formative timespan. What will emerge is a series of portraits of how the publishing house, the instrument workshop, and the varied social milieus of the opera house
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Inside—and outside—Illibata: composition, context and chronology in a famous Josquin motet Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-15 Joshua Rifkin
Opinions remain divided on the date of Illibata Dei virgo nutrix, the motet with the famous acrostic spelling the name Josquin des Prez. Some writers see it as a product of the composer’s years at the papal chapel, 1489–94; others would move its origin considerably earlier, even to 1466–75. The only real foothold we have comes from a Vatican copy made in the mid-1490s. Advocates for an early date see
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The Josquin canon at 500 Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-07 Jesse Rodin
No less contentious today than a generation ago, the Josquin canon has sparked confusion since well before the composer’s death. Although modern scholars have repeatedly confronted the problem, until recently it has not been possible to tackle it from the ground up. This essay proposes a practical methodology for doing so. An Appendix classifying music attributed to Josquin by degrees of confidence
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Motet cycles between devotion and liturgy Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-07 Hatter J.
Motet cycles between devotion and liturgy, ed. FilippiD. V. and PavanelloA. (Basel, 2019), 88 CHF
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Against the odds: pandemic early choral music Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-10-05
In the shadow of the iconic Tower Bridge in London, the Bridge Theatre (one of the capital’s newest) re-opened its doors in summer 2021 with the premiere of Nina Raine’s play, Bach & Sons. The tension between old and new manifested in the contrast of the gleaming, glass-fronted theatre building and the fraying domesticity of the Bach family home portrayed on stage initiated a dialogue of contrasts
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Reassessing the development of cori spezzati: new discoveries in Bologna Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-09-24 Valerio Morucci
For a long time, musicology viewed early polychoral music (cori spezzati) as a Venetian tradition invented by the famous composer and noted teacher Adrian Willaert. Scholars later suggested that this technique was first used by native Italian composers of the Veneto and Lombardy regions between the second and third decades of the 16th century. This idea contributed to the shaping of our perception
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Jakob Adlung’s ‘Anweisung zum Fantasiren’ (c.1725–7): edition, translation and introduction Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-09-08 Derek Remeš, Michael Maul
Jakob Adlung’s recently rediscovered manuscript treatise, ‘Anweisung zum Fantasiren’ (‘Instruction in improvisation’, c.1725–7), proves definitively that some 18th-century musicians understood improvisation modularly in terms of stock voice-leading patterns, or schemas. The manuscript is a compendium containing 28 typical voice-leading patterns that are to be memorized, varied and combined in myriad
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Fundamental and ornamental: historical harps in Europe Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-08-25 Hannah Lane
The recordings reviewed here all feature various kinds of historical harp, with the instrument being used both in the performance of solo repertory and in its capacity for differing styles of accompaniment, as demanded by music ranging between the late 16th and 18th centuries. Traversing Europe from the Iberian Peninsula in the 16th century, to the Italian courts of the 17th century, to the British
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Byrd’s Fragments Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-08-14 Chan E.
ByrdWilliamEight fragmentary songs, edited and reconstructed by JohnstoneAndrew (Teddington: Fretwork Publishing: 2020), Full Score £19, Set of Parts £19, Full Score and Set of Parts £34.
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The 17th-century dramatic voice, sacred and secular Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-08-14 John McKean
The 17th century was a time of great experimentation and innovation in the realm of vocal music. The so-called seconda pratica that emerged in Italy around 1600 gave rise to an intense focus on the dramatic possibilities of music to manifest and express the ideas and emotions conveyed by sung texts, with the consequence that many long-standing conventions of harmony and counterpoint were disrupted
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Swete soundynge Lutes and most pleasant Ditties Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-08-07 Richard Robinson
Within the ever-expanding catalogue of recordings of secular music pre-1650, Elizabethan and Jacobean England still exerts an unfaltering magnetism on performers and listeners alike—something which owes much to the shared geographical and temporal space of musical and literary celebrities like John Dowland, William Byrd and William Shakespeare, all of whom feature on the recordings reviewed here. At
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Jeremy Montagu (1927–2020) Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-06-02 Graham Wells
There can be no doubting that Jeremy Montagu was a towering figure in the field of Organology, both concerning Western and ethnological instruments. He may not have aspired to either a professorship or even a doctorate, but in different circumstances would surely have merited both.
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Three centuries of the guitar in England Early Music (IF 0.6) Pub Date : 2021-07-30 Christopher Page, Paul Sparks
This conversation marks the completion of the trilogy The guitar in Tudor England (Cambridge, 2015), The guitar in Stuart England (Cambridge, 2017) and The guitar in Georgian England (New Haven and London, 2020), by Christopher Page.