This conference, a collaboration between the two projects ‘French Theatre of the Napoleonic Era’ at Warwick University and ‘Music in London, 1800–1851’ at King's College London, was intended to foster interdisciplinary dialogue about early melodrama. In particular, the aim was to investigate the relationship between melodramatic techniques (spoken word over or alternated with instrumental music), melodramatic aesthetics (such as strong contrasts between good and evil and extremes of emotion) and the generic category of melodrama (given to various concert and theatrical forms). While discussion necessarily engaged with phenomena either side of the thirty years specified by the title, participants focused on the period in which melodrama came to prominence as a stage genre, a period in which several of the key European traditions coincided.

The biennial meeting of the American Bach Society inspired the participation of around fifty scholars, performers and other Bach enthusiasts from the United States, Canada and Germany. Organizers included Ellen Exner (University of South Carolina), Markus Rathey (Yale University), Don O. Franklin (Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh), Steven Crist (Emory University) and Reginald Sanders (Kenyon College), who deserves particular thanks for serving as local arrangements chair, a task he dispatched with characteristic aplomb. Kenyon College offered a beautiful and stimulating setting for the conference, and the American Bach Society owes a great debt of thanks to Kenyon President Sean M. Decatur and Provost Joseph L. Klesner, as well as to their Executive Assistant, Pamela J. Faust, for their warm welcome and help with logistics.

In every aspect of cultural theory, considering both the apparently universal aspects of our common humanity and the manifold differences between cultures and individuals is such a huge and fraught undertaking that no one conference can hope to do more than chip away at the edges of the questions raised. This is true even if the purview is limited to the historical study of eighteenth-century musical approaches to these questions. Nevertheless, chipping away at those edges is productive and stimulating, and in this spirit we converged at Oxford – part of the time at the music faculty at St Aldate’s, and part of the time at Wadham College – to discuss ‘Alterity and Universalism in Eighteenth-Century Musical Thought’. The conference was organized by David R. M. Irving (Australian National University) and Estelle Joubert (Dalhousie University) under the auspices of Reinhard Strohm's Balzan prize. Strohm is only the second musicologist (the other was Ludwig Finscher) to have received the Balzan award. He will pursue his ambitious project called ‘Towards a Global History of Music’ over the coming three years.

Musical performers and performing processes are relatively new objects of study if we compare them with composers and works, categories that have been at the centre of musicological concerns for a long time: so much so that in a relatively recent publication, An Introduction to Music Studies, ed. J. P. E. Harper-Scott and Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), the study of musical performance is presented as a field of renewal for music history and analysis.

The Sixteenth Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music (ICBM) was held at the beautiful Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Professor Thomas Hochradner and his effective team of assistants, approximately 250 participants could choose from papers and lecture-recitals that covered a wide spectrum of topics and methodologies. These included new research on notable composers, geographical influences upon musical genres and interdisciplinary approaches. The organizers also offered guided tours on one of the afternoons, which allowed participants to trace the music of the city, learn about the autographs vault of the Mozarteum, listen to the organs at the Metropolitan Church or explore the cathedral quarters (Domquartier).

This conference took as its theme ‘Early Music Revivals and the Performance of Spanish Keyboard Music’. It was organized and directed by Luisa Morales, and was held concurrently with the fifteenth iteration of the Festival Internacional de Música de Tecla Española (FIMTE). The symposium and festival (usually held in October) took full advantage of Mojácar's vibrant August atmosphere, which attracts many visitors from around the world for the picturesque beauty of the fifteenth-century town and its proximity to the Mediterranean. This year the symposium, dedicated to the memory of harpsichordist Rafael Puyana, hosted speakers and performers from Australia, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom and Venezuela.