Why Eighteenth-Century Music? Thirty years ago, eighteenth-century music research represented a scholarly vanguard: the field was at the forefront in source studies, in performance practice, in investigating local music history and even in its willingness to think critically about the ways it had defined itself historically. These successes were in no small part responsible for a fundamental shift in musicological studies, even if this shift, fed by methodologies derived from literary and critical theory, was more apparent in writings on nineteenth-century music. Perhaps the field of eighteenth-century music studies was slow to reposition itself in this new intellectual environment. Or perhaps there was a feeling that this music ‘could look after itself’, that it is the common property of all musicologists. Whatever the reason, research into music of the eighteenth century was eclipsed in terms of the number of publications, conferences and doctoral dissertations.

The staging of tragédies en musique and related genres remains an elusive aspect of French baroque opera. Although scores and librettos supply some information (through scene rubrics and the sung text), several rare sets of prompt notes provide us with many more specific details. The prompt notes fall into two categories: those that illustrate a dramatic convention and those that illustrate individual artistic choices. Both make notable differences in dramatic effect. Choristers and dancers are almost exclusively blocked as a single, collective body while the entrance of soloists to instrumental music often determines the dramatic function of préludes and ritournelles, sometimes accompanying mute acting or conveying meaning when the stage is empty. The prompt notes show that the genre, generally thought of as tradition-bound, also elicited dramatic interpretations from those responsible for staging. An appendix provides a glossed list of the more than fifty prompt notes for a 1778 proposed production of Lully’s Armide.

This article offers close readings of the part-song Die Beredsamkeit and the solo song Lob der Faulheit. The former seems to illustrate ‘eloquence’ on at least four levels by imitating the intonation of elevated speech, by invoking the so-called ‘learned style’ of music through the introduction of various contrapuntal procedures, by quoting some of the most elementary figures of musical rhetoric (such as the Halbzirkel and the tirata) and by constructing the whole of the work as a well-delivered oration consisting of introduction, statement, corroboration, refutation and reaffirmation. Lob der Faulheit, on the other hand, in which the singer finally proves unable to deliver the praise promised in the title, appears to be an extraordinarily sensitive representation of musical failure. The unnatural and forced character of the song is unmistakable in its intervallic and metric structure, and rises in the melody are invariably followed by precipitous falls. Beyond this straightforward musical illustration, the descending fourth that opens and closes the vocal line may also be programmatic in its seeming reference to the well-known contemporary saying, ‘es wird auf ein Lami hinaus laufen’ (it will run out on a Lami), a forecast of a bad end.

Period concepts and periodizations are constructions, or readings, and hence always subject to reinterpretation. Many recent scholars have privileged institutional and reception history over style and compositional history, and periodized European music according to the ‘centuries’; but these constructions are no less partial or tendentious than older ones. Recent historiographical writings addressing these issues are evaluated.

If we wish to construe the eighteenth century as a music-historical period, we must abandon the traditional notion that it was bifurcated in the middle. Not only did the musical Baroque not last beyond 1720 in most areas, but the years c1720–c1780 constituted a period in their own right, dominated by the international ‘system’ of Italian opera, Enlightenment ideals, neoclassicism, the galant and (after c1760) the cult of sensibility. We may call this the ‘central’ eighteenth century. Furthermore, this period can be clearly distinguished from preceding and following ones. The late Baroque (c1670–c1720) was marked by the rationalization of Italian opera, tragédie lyrique, the standardization of instrumental genres and the rise of ‘strong’ tonality. The period c1780–c1830 witnessed the rise of the ‘regulative work-concept’ (Goehr) and ‘pre-Romanticism’ (Dahlhaus), and the Europe-wide triumph of ‘Viennese modernism’, including the first autonomous instrumental music and a central role in the rise of the modern (post-revolutionary) world, symbolized by Haydn’s sublime in The Creation.

A tripartite reading of a ‘long’ eighteenth-century in music history along these lines seems more nearly adequate than either baroque/classical or 1700–1800 as a single, undifferentiated period.

In 1739, two years before his death, Vivaldi sold a group of five psalms to the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. All but one of these psalms had been identified and located prior to May 2003, when the missing work, a Nisi Dominus in A major for three solo singers, five obbligato instruments and strings, turned up in Dresden as the unexpected by-product of a routine inspection. Like one of the other psalms belonging to the same group, the Beatus vir rv795, this new discovery, rv803, is attributed in its Dresden source to Baldassarre Galuppi. The misattribution appears to have been an act of deliberate falsification by the Venetian copyist Iseppo Baldan, who slipped the two Vivaldi compositions in to a large consignment of sacred vocal works, mainly by Galuppi, dispatched to the Saxon Hofkapelle in the late 1750s. The new Nisi Dominus is noteworthy for the high level of vocal virtuosity that all eight movements demand and for its use of rare instruments (viola d’amore, tenor chalumeau and violino in tromba marina) to lend added colour in individual movements. It is also a striking example of Vivaldi’s ‘late’ manner, which, although influenced by the galant style of younger composers, remains true to his personal idiom. At the same time, it rivals the oratorio Juditha triumphans as a showcase for the diverse talents of the Pietà’s female musicians.

Among the special features of Bachanalia: The Essential Listener’s Guide to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier – a well-meaning effort, though badly misconceived, in my view – are author Eric Lewin Altschuler’s picks for ‘The Top Ten Fugues’, ‘The Top Ten Subjects’, ‘The Superstar Four’ and so on.

One of the joys of compiling a thematic catalogue is that a number of small mysteries crop up as one evaluates biographical and source material for the composer concerned. The journey often requires delving into the private life and works in intimate detail, and brings to light important information that in turn raises questions about the various influences or connections affecting the composer or style. But when this information is lacunar or based primarily upon circumstantial evidence, it provides only plausible suppositions that, while not entirely provable as incontrovertible fact, nonetheless dare the scholar to prove otherwise. Such is the circumstantial case for the meeting of two of the more remarkable composers of the second half of the eighteenth century, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Martin Kraus, who share nearly identical life spans and dates.