Oxford Monographs on Music – serie

The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis was founded in honour of Dionysius, one of seven missionaries sent from Rome to Gaul around 250. It grew to be one of the most powerful monasteries in western Christendom and enjoyed a central position in French history as the first Gothic abbey, royal necropolis, and place of origin of the chronicles of the kings. This is a study of the music and ritual at Saint-Denis from the sixth to the sixteenth century. It is based on an examination of the liturgical books and archival sources relating to the abbey, in particular the surviving service-books, which tell us much about the history of the music and of the Divine Office at Saint-Denis. Anne Robertson also looks at the tropes and sequences proper to the office for Saint-Denis, provides information on the performance practices, instruments, musicians, and liturgists from the abbey, and offers an account of the history of the liturgy from the Council of Tours in 567 to the pillage of the abbey by the Huguenots in 1567, thus explicating the extant liturgical codices from Saint-Denis. For the author the ritual and history of the abbey is also inextricably linked to the reconstruction of its various buildings, the decorations of the church, even the monks' ambitions. This is a fascinating and wide-ranging study of this extraordinary institution.

The concept of raga, the traditional basis of melodic composition and improvisation in Indian classical music, has become familiar to listeners and musicologists throughout the world, but its historial origins and early development have been little explored. This book draws on written documents from the pre-Islamic period in India, including musical treatises (expecially that of the thirteenth-century theorist, Sarngadeva), literary works, and a remarkable inscription comprising musical notation. These documents bear witness to the development of the earlies ragas, which they name, classify, define, and in some cases illustrate with melodic examples. The melodies, which have not previously been studied in detail, for the focus of the book, which analyses their notation, musical structure and relationship to the theoretical tradition in which they are embedded, as evidence for the early history of melodic compostion and improvisation in the Indian tradition. Dr Widdess's comprehensive treatment of his subject will be of interest to musicologists and ethnomusicologists, particularly those concerned with music theory, mode and monody, and improvisation, and also Sanskritists and other Indologists.

The musical achievements of the so-called `Franco-Flemish School' have attracted many writers, yet Bruges itself has still to be put back on the map of European music history. This book describes how the people of Bruges shaped their acoustic environment and gave musical expression to their spiritual needs. It is based on a scrutiny of musical sources, stylistic trends in music, composers' achievements, and the function of musical genres; all these are seen against a reconstruction, from archival sources, of the socio-economic context of the art of music - an art which, in all its various manifestations, `high' and `low', sacred and secular, courtly and civic, polyphonic and monophonic, mirrors later medieval urban culture as a whole.

Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1627) occupies a unique place in Renaissance music culture: he was the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition. Working for the Gonzaga dukes in Mantua, yet remaining faithful to his own religious community, Rossi has a biography fraught with difficult and often exciting questions of socio-cultural order. How Rossi solved, or appears to have solved, the problem of conflicting interests is a subject worthy of inquiry, not only because we want to know more about Rossi, but also because Rossi can stand as a paradigm for other Jewish figures who, contemporary with him, moved between different cultures.

Time in Indian Music is the first major study of rhythm, metre, and form in North Indian rag, or classical, music. Martin Clayton presents a theoretical model for the organization of time in this repertory, a model which is related explicitly to other spheres of Indian thought and culture as well as to current ideas on musical time in alternative repertories–including that of Western music. This theoretical model is elucidated and illustrated with reference to many musical examples drawn from authentic recorded performances. These examples clarify key Indian musicological concepts such as tal (metre), lay (tempo or rhythm), and laykari (rhythmic variation). More generally, the volume addresses the implications of performance practice for the organization of rhythm and metre. Written in a clear and accessible style and illustrated with 102 music examples and diagrams, it will appeal to anyone interested in Indian aesthetic forms and the study of musical time. The book contains a free CD of authentic recorded performances closely referred to in the text.

Those privileged enough to attend performances of masques at court in the early seventeenth century invariably commented on the sumptuousness of the music (and often had little to say about the literary aspects of the entertainments). Yet our view of the masque has been dominated by the texts, and indeed, the modern scholarship has tended to treat the masque first and foremost as a literary genre. This book is the first complete study of the multi-faceted view of its subject, piecing together a picture of what the music was actually like from musical score, documentary evidence, and the dramatic texts. Vocal music and dance in the Jacobean masque are treated separately - a division that reflects the way in which the music was originally composed, with one group of composers writing songs while violinist/dancing masters prepared dances. There are chapters offering a reconsideration of the musical and documentary evidence for the William Lawes masques, on Inigo Jones's musical priorities, and an investigation of French influence in the Caroline masques. The book also describes the departures from court norms in masques which took place away from Whitehall.

For many reasons Hans Pfitzner was and remains controversial. This stems partly from his difficult personality, and partly from the nationalistic context in which are set his cultural beliefs. His music has also tended to be coloured by such labels as conservative and romantic. Yet he actually has a wide reputation for his `musical legend' Palestrina, and there is much in his output which sets him as the true heir of Wagner and Schumann.This is the first study in English of Pfitzner's output. It sets his music in the context of his cultural opinions, which, though conceived as reflections on music, have acquired a more political status to which the history of Pfitzner's times has contributed. It offers a revaluation of his music, partly in order to reveal the innate value of his stage works, chamber music, and songs, and also to illustrate the historical importance of his ideas, which reflect a German conservative tradition which was taken over and nearly destroyed by the Third Reich.

Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707) was the greatest figure in the history of German music between Schutz and Bach. His church music is performed today, yet that of his North German contemporaries (such as Matthias Weckmann, Christoph Bernhard, Nicolaus Bruhns, and Johann Meder) has received comparatively little attention. This book, taking its lead from Jerome Roche's illuminating study North Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi (OUP, 1984), presents an overview of the North German church music of Buxtehude's lifetime, much of which remains unavailable in modern editions. It challenges widely-held beliefs about the nature and development of the repertory, and of the place held by Buxtehude within it. The picture that emerges is of a repertory that is far more beholden to Italian influence that has previously been appreciated, and one that is not dominated by any single figure. After discussion of the religious background and liturgical context in which the music was performed, Geoffrey Webber examines the manner in which Italian church music became known and performed in the region, and surveys composers from all the principal courts and cities in the extensive North German and Baltic area. He highlights the relationship between the social context in which individual composers worked and the nature of their output. After a detailed analysis of the repertory itself, the book concludes with an examination of issues relating to performance practice.

In the fourteenth century composers and theorists invented mensuration and proportion signs that allowed them increased flexibility and precision in notating a very wide range of rhythmic and metric relationships. The origin and interpretation of these signs is one of the least understood and most complex issues in music history. This study represents the first attempt to see the origin of musical mensuration and proportion signs in the context of other measuring systems of the fourteenth century. The author also traces the evolution of the mensural notational system to the threshold of the modern system of notation. In the process, the exact meaning of everyday mensuration and proportion sign encountered in music and theory from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century is analysed and elucidated. The investigation results in a revision of many currently held views concerning the significance and development of early time signatures and will be indispensable to scholars and performers of late medieval and Renaissance music.

Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1628) occupies a unique place in Renaissance music culture: he was the earliest outstanding Jewish composer to work in the European art music tradition. In the field of instrumental music, he established the trio sonata as a standard combination of voices for 17th-century chamber music and developed the sonata into a vehicle of virtuoso display. In his vocal works, he wrote music to texts of some of the most fashionable poets of his day, including Battista Guarini, Gabriello Chiabrera, and Ottavio Rinuccini. The mannerist poet Giovan Battista Marino particularly captured his attention: with 33 settings of Marino's verses, among them the remarkable Canzone de' baci in eight strophes, Rossi stands in the vanguard of contemporary literary developments. Rossi composed a book of duets and trios (Madrigaletti) that paved the way for similar chamber works by Agostino Steffani and others from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Last but not least, Rossi carved out his own niche in the history of sacred music by composing the first and only collection of polyphonic settings of Hebrew texts (his `Songs of Solomon') before the mid-nineteenth century. As a Jewish composer working for the Gonzaga dukes in Mantua, yet remaining faithful to his own religious community, Rossi has a biography fraught with difficult and often exciting questions of a socio-cultural order. How Rossi solved, or appears to have solved, the problem of conflicting interests is a subject worthy of inquiry, not only because we want to know more about Rossi, but also because Rossi can stand as a paradigm for other Jewish figures who, contemporary with him, moved between different cultures.

Agostino Agazzari (c.1580-c.1642) has long been recognized as one of the most prominent theorists of the early Baroque. The enduring fame of his 1607 treatise on the basso continuo has, however, overshadowed his equally significant contributions as a composer. And for all his renown, relatively little has been written about his professional career in Siena. This book not only provides the first comprehensive study of his life and sacred works, it also opens a window on musical culture in Siena during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Through the use of archival materials, the author documents Agazzari's long association with the Sienese Cathedral and furnishes valuable information on the personnel, repertory, and performance practices there. She argues for a reassessment of the influences that shaped the composer's style and challenges the generally held view that Sienese culture stagnated after the fall of the Republic in 1555. The book contributes significantly to our knowledge of musical life in the Tuscan `City of the Virgin'.

This is the first comprehensive survey of seventeenth-century Spanish theatrical music to be written in any language. While particular aspects of the field have been explored before, no previous single study has succeeded in defining the place and function of music in the Spanish theatre, and the nature of the extant repertory. This book explains the development of the various musical-theatrical genres of the period (such as the semi-opera, opera, court plays), details the origins of the zarzuela, and looks at the anomalous production of three operas during the seventeenth century. It is based on a thorough study of the primary sources (musical sources, text of plays, archival documents), and the author combines history of music, history of theatre, politics and literary and musical anlysis to build a complete picture. In addition the book answers questions concerning the nature of the Spanish musical baroque and its relationship to European musical and theatrical developments. As such, it will be welcomed by musicologists, hispanists, students of Spanish culture, and historians of the arts and ideas.

From the early 18th century until the present day, opera seria as practised by Handel and his contemporaries has been the subject of satire and even derision for its dramatic artifice and virtuosic vocal displays. Close examination of Handel's autograph manuscripts, the librettos upon which they were based, and other contemporary documents reveal the extent to which Handel was influenced by his singers and their abilities in creating his commercially successful and dramatically effective operas. Drawing on ideas and evidence from these sources, this study demonstrates the fact that Handel's singers were the single most important influence in his opera composition during his tenure as composer and music director of the Royal Academy of Music from 1719-28.

In this comprehensive study of performance practice in Haydn's keyboard music, Bernard Harrison confronts the important issues facing any performer of Haydn's keyboard music. He deals with the full range of Haydn's keyboard work - concertos, divertimenti, concertini, trios, Klavierstücke, and sonatas - and emphasizes the connection between performance practice and compositional style. He addresses many of the most controversial issues in recent research on the performance practice of eighteenth- century music, and takes a stance on some of the recurring controversies in Haydn research.Haydn's ornamentation is treated in four extensive chapters which range over Haydn's changing notational practices, the large corpus of 18th-century theoretical information on performance, and an examination of the music itself. Other issues in performance are elucidated in wide-ranging discussions, and Harrison presents new evidence on the question of the influence of C.P.E. Bach on Haydn. He surveys broader aspects of interpretation, commenting sympathetically but critically on the phenomenon of `early music'.

Haydn never discussed his compositional ideas in much detail, either in the interviews he gave to an early biographer or in his surviving correspondence. Moreover, relatively few sketches of his compositions have been preserved. Therefore, attempts to reconstruct Haydn's compositional thought, and in particular his formal logic, must rely on evidence drawn from close analyses of the works themselves. Using his symphonies as its subject, this book attempts to clarify what Haydn's fundamental principles of formal logic might have been. It shows how Haydn employed those basic compositional principles to structure his forms, providing explanations that account for specific details of individual movements as well as the relationships between the movements. Beyond what they show about Haydn's formal thought and the individual works discussed, the analyses in this book also have a larger purpose: to argue in support of the idea that compositions cannot be analysed in a meaningful manner if the analysis is divorced from the work's historical context.

Handel's frequent and extensive alterations to his scores yield much valuable information on musical and extra-musical matters. This book represents the most thorough study to date of Handel's compositional procedures in his English oratorios and musical dramas. David Hurley examines six major works composed between 1743 and 1751 (Semele, Hercules, Belshazzar, Solomon, Susanna, and Jephtha), explores changes in the autograph scores, and, where possible, traces the progress of musical ideas from sketches and/or borrowings through drafts to the first performance version. By studying recurring types of revisions, Hurley identifies Handel's regular musical concerns while also addressing changes arising from specific dramatic situations. The later chapters of the book offer fresh insight into the relationship between music and text, evaluating for the first time the role of word painting in Handel's compositional process and furthering our knowledge about Handel's interactions with librettists and singers during the oratorio years.

This study investigates an almost unknown musical culture: that of cloistered nuns in one of the major cities of early modern Europe. These women were the most famous musicians of Milan, and the music composed for them opens up a hitherto unstudied musical repertory, which allows insight into the symbolic world of the city. Even more importantly, the music actually composed by four such nuns, Claudia Scossa, Claudia Rusca, Chiara Margarita Cozzollani, and Rosa Giacinta Badalla - reveals the musical expression of women's devotional life.The two centuries' worth of battles over nuns' singing of polyphony, studies here for the first time on the basis of massive archival documentation, also suggest that the implementation of reform in the major centre of post-Tridentine Catholic renewal was far more varied; incomplete, subject to local political pressure and individual interpretation, and short-lived than any religious historian has ever suggested. Other factors that marked nuns' musical lives and creative output - liturgical traditions of the religious orders, the problems of performance practice attendant upon all-female singing ensembles - are here addressed for the first time in the musicological literature.

Eighteenth-century pianos shaped and influenced the music that was written for them. However, although organological studies probe the instrument in ever more detail, and musical criticism focuses increasingly on the musical repertoire, the relationship between the two has not been properly examined.This book concentrates on the keyboard writing of the last third of the eighteenth century, as inspired by the fundamentally different constructions of the German/Viennese and the English pianoforte. The highly articulated languages of Mozart and his Viennese contemporaries, and the more robust, pre-romantic style of Duzzek and his London colleagues reflect the very characteristics of these respective instruments. Beyond the scrutiny of the music, attention is given also to the players. The differentiation between professionals and amateurs is addressed, and contemporary sources help provide a description of late-eighteenth-century performing styles; such a survey offers new insight into the living art of the pianoforte during a most important period in its history.

Erik Satie (1866-1925) came of age in the bohemian subculture of Montmartre, with its artists' cabarets and cafés-concerts. Yet apologists have all too often downplayed this background as potentially harmful to the reputation of a composer whom they regarded as the progenitor of modern French music. Whiting argues, on the contrary, that Satie's two decades in and around Montmartre decisively shaped his aesthetic priorities and compositional strategies. He gives the fullest account to date of Satie's professional activities as a popular musician, and of how he transferred the parodic techniques and musical idioms of cabaret entertainment to works for concert hall. From the esoteric Gymnopédies to the bizarre suites of the 1910s and avant-garde ballets of the 1920s (not to mention music journalism and playwriting), Satie's output may be daunting in its sheer diversity and heterodoxy; but his radical transvaluation of received artistic values makes far better sense once placed in the fascinating context of bohemian Montmartre.

This book is the first full-length study of the courtly love songs of the trouvère to address the central musical problems of the repertoire as a whole, embracing source studies, interpretation, historiography, and analysis. The argument of the book revolves around three axes, each of which is essential to the appreciation of the others: problems concerning the extant manuscript tradition; the crucial role of orality; and stylistic changes and plurality in the reperotire.For the first time, a full overview of the sources and notation is undertaken. This reveals the idiosyncrasies of individual manuscripts but, more importantly, it identifies two basic phases in the manuscript tradition. The study of melodic variants reveals the performance art that lies at the heart of the courtly grand chant; processes and techniques of variation are examined, bringing us to a closer understanding of the tenets of the melodic art of the early trouvères. A close study of select trouvères from the different generation reveals stylstic change and plurality, particularly in the melodic art which in some respects was less prescribed than the poetic texts.Consequently the courtly songs of the trouvères truly come alive in this book.

Henry Lawes (1596-1662) has long been acknowledged as the most important and prolific English songwriter between the death of John Dowland in 1626 and the birth of Henry Purcell in 1659. He is celebrated as Milton's collaborator in Comus (1634). Although he wrote some church music, Lawess significance as a composer lies in his settings of many of the choicest lyrics by Cavalier poets such as Carew, Herrick, Suckling, and Waller–who, like Lawes himself, belonged to the brilliant court of Charles I. This book combines an account of his life with a study of his development as a songwriter during this fascinating historic period. Following the execution of the King in 1649, Lawes played an important part in establishing concerts in London during the 1650s, and was one of the composers of the first English opera, Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes (1656). At the Restoration he set Zadok the Priest for the coronation of Charles II, but died the following year. The last book on Lawes appeared in 1940, since when the importance of his songs has been increasingly recognized–thanks in part to Ian Spink's own previous study, English Song: Dowland to Purcell (1986), and his edition of Cavalier Songs: 1625-1660 for Musica Britannica.

The first full-length study for forty years, Arcangelo Corelli offers a much needed reassessment of the seminal composer's life and works. His current historical perspective is still largely conditioned by the opinions of Burney and Hawkins in the late 18th century who saw him as the consolidator of past trends rather than an instigator--a view fully endorsed in the two biographies of the present century. Neither of these writers was truly in a position to make such judgements if only because neither was aware of the contributions of the Roman School to which Corelli emphatically affirmed his allegiance. Extensive archival research over recent years now dispels much of the anecdote and hearsay accumulated over the centuries and makes possible a more balanced evaluation of Corelli's true status in the development of the prime instrumental genres, accounting for his phenomenal success both during his lifetime and in the creation of musical canon in the decades after his death.

Despite its rather forbidding name, the `Chromatic Fourth' is one of the most familiar short themes in virtually all western music over the four hundred years before the middle of our century. It is a sequence of six notes that can be heard in a huge variety of ways, most originally, effectively, and beautifully in the work of the greatest composers, from the madrigalists to Stravinsky, from Byrd to Bartók, with telling examples in the operas of Monteverdi, Mozart, and Wagner, or in the keyboard music of Bull, Bach, and Schubert. Although the existence of the chromatic fourth has long been recognized, and occasionally mentioned by music historians, this is the first thorough-going attempt to trace its likely origins and its evolution over four hundred years. With over 200 music examples, Peter Williams demonstrates the theme's wonderful variety, and shows that it was used by composers not only as a means of emotional expression, but also as a structural device.

Music Criticism in Vienna records a culture in which musical criticism had achieved the status of a minor art form. The period covered - October 1896 to December 1897 - was an eventful time in Vienna. Bruckner died, then Brahms; Mahler arrived; premieres of works by Czech composers coincided with increasing tension in the Empire between Czechs and Germans; Puccini's La Boheme reached Vienna on its sensational progress around the world; and the great programme music debate continued. These events and issues were recorded and debated by some two dozen critics ranging from Eduard Hanslick, widely credited with (and blamed for) raising music criticism to an art, to Heinrich Schenker. The focus of Sandra McColl's monograph is unashamedly on the critics themselves, and her reconstruction of the climate of debate about whatever music or musicians came to their notice. She illuminates the intellectual climate in which the music was created, performed and received, and provides a foundation for the study of musical criticism in the post-Hanslick generation.

The royal string band at the English Court had its origins in a six-man consort from Italy, brought to England by Henry VIII in the spring of 1540. Peter Holman's book charts the history of this institution from its beginnings to the time of Purcell. He considers the previous history of instrumentalists at court, the role of the court band in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its influence on the dance music of the period. The establishment of the band at the English court is set in the context of the violin's place in Europe in the sixteenth century, as the author considers the origins of the instrument and discusses contemporary references to violin bands in court, town, and church. The development of the violin band is traced by reference to an immense amount of documentary information, much of it new. The first thorough treatment of this subject, Peter Holman's book will be welcomed for the new light it sheds on large areas of musical history.

This book opens a door long closed on an important era in the history of Venice. It presents, for the first time, an introductory, contextual study of three centuries of musical activity at the four major eleemosynary foundations of the former Republic of Venice: the ospedali grandi. It provides a comprehensive account of the institutional, social, religious, and civic dimensions of these welfare complexes, with particular reference to their musical subsidiaries, or cori.Involving over 300 external professional male composers and music teachers and over 800 internal professional women musicians, the history of the cori also incorporates a vast repertory of over 4,000 original works - sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental, solo and choral - little know today but recognized as key elements in the historical evolution of musical genres. Responsible for this phenomenon through their association with the ospedali and the figlie del coro were such figures as Lotti, Legrenzi, Vivaldi, Hasse, Galuppi, and Cimarosa, to name but six. It is their relationship to the ospedali and the concert series in the churches and music salons annexed to them that Dr Berdes explores. In the process she proves the significance of the cori as reflectors of a range of cross-disciplinary scholarship from the history of art and architecture to the history of culture and social policy, as well as medical care and aspects of women's, children's, and Venetian studies. Amassing a wealth of information from primary sources, this book constitutes a repository of information and references for a multitude of new investigations. Above all, it will facilitate rediscovery, performance, and analysis of the repertoire commissioned for, and first performed by, the women musicians of the cori, a repertoire of unique richness which may be seen as the mirror of a lost Venetian civilization.

The subject of this book arises from the author's discovery or identification of ten important manuscripts of early seventeenth-century Italian solo song (monody) previously unexplored by modern scholars. Almost by coincidence, the author's research shows that all ten manuscripts preserve portions of Roman repertoire largely by composers associated with the most significant music patron of the period, Alessandro Peretti, Cardinal montalto. Through extensive archival documentation, Cardinal Montalto's patronage of music is set in the broader context of the network of political, economic, and cultural clientela to which Montalto belonged. Hill documents new explanations of the origin of monody, focusing on the roles of Naples and rome and their unwritten traditions. A thorough analysis of the repertoire itself reveals and explains distinct subgenres of monody that have not previously been distinguished. Music for Battista Guarini's last stage work and for the first Roman opera brought forth. Thus, identified, examined, analysed and placed in context, this repertoire and its genesis call forth a fundamental revision of existing narratives and explanations of the early Baroque vocal music in Rome and the rise of the Italian chamber cantata, next to opera, the most significant musical genre of the seventeenth century.

The Sound of Medieval Song is a study of how sacred and secular music was actually sung during the Middle Ages. The source of the information is the actual notation in the early manuscripts as well as statements found in approximately 50 theoretical treatises written between the years 600-1500. The writings describe various singing practices and both desirable and undesirable vocal techniques, providing a fairly accurate picture of how singers approached the music of the period. Detailed descriptions of the types and uses of improvised ornament indicate that in performance the music was highly ornate, and included trill, gliss, reverberation, pulsation, pitch inflection, non-diatonic tones, and cadenza-like passages of various lengths. The treatises also provide evidence of stylistic differences in various geographical locations. McGee draws conclusions about the kind of vocal production and techniques necessary in order to reproduce the music as it was performed during the Middle Ages, aligning the practices much more closely with those of the Middle East than has ever been previously acknowledged.

Only in the latter half of the twentieth century did the star of Jan Dismas Zelenka begin to ascend. Why did this major Bohemian composer of the Baroque era - who was known to, and esteemed by Johann Sebastian Bach - remain in the shadows for so long? Although most of Zelenka's music was composed to serve the Catholic liturgy, he left a handful of secular compositions, including six remarkable chamber sonatas. When these were first published in the 1960s, the resurrection of the almost-forgotten Zelenka was heralded. Drawing upon surviving musical materials, contemporary accounts, and Jesuit documentation, this volume presents insights into Zelenka's life and his music and the brilliant context in which he worked - the Dresden court during the reigns of the Kings of Poland and Electors of Saxony, Friedrich August I and II. A catalogue of Zelenka's compositions is also included.