Berthold Over – författare

During the 17th and 18th century musicians' mobilities and migrations are essential for the European music history and the cultural exchange of music. Adopting viewpoints that reflect different methodological approaches and diversified research cultures, the book presents studies on central scopes, strategies and artistic outcomes of mobile and migratory musicians as well as on the transfer of music. By looking at elite and non-elite musicians and their everyday mobilities to major and minor centers of music production and practice, new biographical patterns and new stylistic paradigms in the European East, West and South emerge.

In Early Modern times, techniques of assembling, compiling and arranging pre-existing material were part of the established working methods in many arts. In the world of 18th-century opera, such practices ensured that operas could become a commercial success because the substitution or compilation of arias fitting the singer's abilities proved the best recipe for fulfilling the expectations of audiences. Known as »pasticcios« since the 18th-century, these operas have long been considered inferior patchwork. The volume collects essays that reconsider the pasticcio, contextualize it, define its preconditions, look at its material aspects and uncover its aesthetical principles.

Printed music was central to the performance, reception, and recollection of music in the 18th century. Among music publishers, the London firm of John Walsh (father and son) held unmatched commercial reach both in and outside of Britain. The contributors examine how the Walsh's brokered musical taste in and beyond Europe. They show the firm calibrating its offer to suit and shape an audience that ranged from amateurs of limited means to well-heeled opera devotees and members of court circles. Rigorous scholarship tracks the origins of Walsh miscellanies as well as the aims of the collectors of these editions and the provenances of Walsh volumes held by libraries today.