Although musicology as a discipline has expanded enormously over the past few decades, many of its core interests remain much as they were a century ago, when the primary task facing scholars was to take stock of what had been written and by whom. We now possess good if not yet definitive catalogues of many composers’ oeuvres and in some cases complete or near-complete critical editions. Less systematically organized performing editions of works by non-canonical composers have also begun to appear in increasing numbers in recent years to complement the pioneering surveys in publications like Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich and Musica Britannica. Systematic studies of contemporary documents relating to individual musicians and musical establishments have proved exceptionally useful, though much of the picture remains obscure. Thus, after a century of unremitting labour, we have a musical chart that is extravagantly detailed in some areas yet frustratingly blank in others. The chance survival of documents enables us, for example, to know how many coffee spoons Leopold Hofmann owned at the time of his death, yet few if any documents survive that shed light on his personal and professional life. None the less, in spite of the incompleteness of our knowledge we possess an incomparably more detailed understanding of music in the eighteenth century than seemed possible even twenty years ago.

In the inaugural issue of this journal James Webster offered us a thoughtful meditation on the hoary, and seemingly intractable, problem of configuring the eighteenth century so that it might constitute an intelligible subject of musicological research (‘The Eighteenth Century as a Music-Historical Period?’, Eighteenth-Century Music 1/1 (2004), 47–60). Clearly, we have come a long way from the time when eighteenth-century music was oriented almost exclusively around the grand Olympian peaks of High Baroque and Viennese Classical styles. If these dominating polarities have not entirely disappeared from our view, they certainly seem to loom far less large in our remapped musical landscape. Indeed, I can think of no other century in music history whose stylistic contours have been so dramatically redrawn as those of the eighteenth century. Of course we would err in the other direction by depicting – to continue my geographical metaphor – only a flattened, homogeneous musical landscape in the eighteenth century, covered with galant-type foliage nurtured in the hothouse of Italian opera buffa. As Webster has convincingly argued, there are still major protruberances jutting out from the first and final thirds of the century that need somehow to be taken into account in our surveys. Still, there is no question that the revised topographies little resemble the one we learned (and still might teach) from our textbooks. Some major tectonic shifts have taken place in eighteenth-century musical studies, even if those shifts have yet to settle down fully into any figuration that enjoys consensus among music historians.

This article explores the relationship between Drury Lane’s most popular eighteenth-century masque, Comus (1738), and the contemporary fashions in politics, literature and recreation that informed it. On one level, the masque was a revival honouring Milton, the author of its libretto, in a manner consistent with his eighteenth-century reception: as a genius whose merit was just being recognized, and as a patriot hero whose incorruptibility mirrored the aspirations of those pledging allegiance to ‘British’ values.

On another level, however, the pastoral entertainment seems to have been mainly concerned with popular notions of female propriety and the challenges posed to those notions by the production’s star soprano, Kitty Clive. Titillation was assured by interpolated musical scenes which had little to do with the libretto but much to do with composer Thomas Arne’s mastery of the discursive techniques of ballad farce. The personality cult around Clive, the ‘Goddess of Mirth’, imposed upon the masque her most celebrated musical characterizations (both in the type of song and in the specific lyrics sung) to grant full voice to her flaunting of social codes.

The overwhelming success of Comus caused the masque to be reinvented as a public diversion at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens by its owner, John Tyers. A Milton statue was erected in the gardens to preside over ‘musical downs’, where instrumentalists played hidden behind bushes to the north of ‘The Temple of Comus’. Recontextualizing Comus at Vauxhall, Tyers created a site (nicknamed the ‘Rendezvous of Cupid’) in which lovers could further explore the transgressions of Mrs Clive’s musical scenes within a simulated pastoral myth.

This article explores the significance of musical, cultural and scientific discoveries in the South Seas to European scholars in the second half of the eighteenth century, but in particular to the emerging clique of music historians in England and France. It examines the relationship between Charles Burney and many leading figures in maritime exploration, and the notable interest he took in the discovery and codification of South Sea music. The writing of Dr Burney on this subject is considered, as is his contact with Omai (Mai), a young Tahitian brought to England. Through the examination of correspondence, memoirs and other sources the article also discusses the exposure of ‘noble savages’ Omai and Aotourou to French and Italian music in London and Paris, and the use of their reactions to fuel the controversy between the supporters of these respective styles in late eighteenth-century Europe. Lastly, it briefly mentions a number of eighteenth-century musical works that used the Pacific as their central theme and examines artwork that complemented the concepts of geographical exploration with the musical exploration of Dr Burney.

The Anna Magdalena Bach Book of 1725 is a heterogeneous collection of virtuosic and profound keyboard suites, light and often insipid dances, and a number of sacred songs whose dominant theme is death. This striking juxtaposition of the sacred and secular is hardly lessened by the fact that the songs are written in a disarmingly fashionable style which at first seems incommensurate with the existential issues addressed by the poetry. While scholars have generally seen the notebook’s less demanding pieces, including the songs, as a testament to Anna Magdalena’s taste for the galant style, little has been said about her apparent penchant for reflecting on and preparing for death through the medium of her personal musical notebook. By reading these poetic texts and their musical settings against the voluminous writings on the art of dying to be found in the family’s theological library, this essay argues for the centrality of the ars moriendi in the Bachs’ domestic life and in their music-making.

Despite Rousseau’s condemnation of the ‘progress’ of civilization and his suspicions concerning the arts, he none the less articulates a redemptive role for aesthetic experience within modern life. In choosing music as his privileged aesthetic object, he suggests the possibility of an eighteenth-century aesthetic based on experience that anticipates later developments in romanticism and modernism. And by locating the possibility of redemption within aesthetic experience couched in terms of musical performance, he articulates a modern role for the work of art that looks forward to nineteenth- and twentieth-century aesthetic theory from the German Romantics to the Frankfurt School.

Throughout the Georgian period London was the most significant British centre for musical instrument manufacture. Traditionally, research in this area has focused on the surviving instruments themselves, thereby emphasizing those makers in charge of flourishing workshops and those who were in the habit of signing their products. By examining archival sources, however, it is possible to glean a more complete picture of musical instrument production, through the identification of ‘hidden’ makers unrepresented by extant instruments, the establishment of patterns of settlement and the highlighting of relationships between different builders.

Two principal sources form the basis of this study: the online edition of the Proceedings of the Old Bailey and the Middlesex Sessions of the Peace Records. While these sources are an important record of crime and punishment, it is the unwitting testimony of the trials rather than the crimes, the legal procedures or the punishments that is the primary focus of this study. Indeed, since the trials enable the identification of people involved at all levels of the musical instrument trade, it is arguable that they provide one of the most significant means of establishing some of the processes characterizing the industry during the second half of the eighteenth century.

Handel’s Theodora (1750, libretto Thomas Morell), an oratorio about a Christian martyr, does not have the religious-political import of his other English oratorios or the literary-critical stature of his English secular dramas and odes. A ‘sport’ among Handel’s oratorios, until recently Theodora resisted whole-hearted appreciation and elicited widely differing summaries of its meaning. This is the first extended study to be published since the chapter in Winton Dean’s Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques of 1959. Drawing on guidelines proposed in the appendix ‘Approaches to Oratorio’, the article examines the libretto’s sources, dramatization and relation to the librettist’s interests; positions the work with regard to the religious ideas of its time, identifying its religious-historical standpoint; and describes its kinship with contemporary drama, fiction and aesthetics. Connoisseurs among Handel’s audience appreciated Theodora but ‘the Town’ did not. It is suggested that both Morell and Handel were aiming for inclusiveness, comprehensiveness and breadth of appeal, and in so doing produced a work – more ambiguous and conspicuously open to interpretation than the biblical oratorios – that demands the listener’s active and discriminating engagement.

In 1755 a small vocal instruction book dedicated to the King’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, was published in Paris under the name of [Jean-Antoine] Bérard. His role in this work was challenged a year later by l’abbé Jean Blanchet, who published a greatly enlarged version of Bérard’s book, claiming that he was its true author. Up to now, the lack of definitive source material has prevented a resolution of this question. New evidence clarifies its puzzling aspects, enabling us to reach a plausible conclusion. Investigating this matter leads also to insights in other areas, including the original meaning of the term amateur, the first known presentation of diaphragm breathing in print, the quality of singing at the Paris Opéra, contemporary views on the overuse of embellishment and audience behaviour.

Domenico Scarlatti played a consistently significant role in English musical life from 1738 to the end of the century, even though he never travelled to England. His ‘absent presence’ was mediated by the eighty-three Scarlatti sonatas available in print in the eighteenth century. Scarlatti’s ‘English’ sonatas – defined here as those pieces available in print or manuscript to an eighteenth-century English player – display common compositional traits, in particular the frequent use of virtuoso techniques that appeal to the eye as well as the ear, such as crossed-hand passagework and leaps. English professional keyboard players used these visually virtuoso sonatas to establish their credentials in a competitive market, and the performance of this repertory – the most difficult in print – remained a benchmark for skilful execution at the keyboard to the end of the century. The performance venues for Scarlatti sonatas are difficult to document outside of anecdotal evidence drawn from personal accounts such as those by Charles and Fanny Burney. I provide new documentary evidence for semi-public performances of Scarlatti sonatas by Charles Jr and Samuel Wesley in the 1770s and offer further evidence that Scarlatti’s music held its place during a period of profound change in musical style and taste. Even as his sonatas were published and played to the end of the century, Scarlatti was frequently invoked in writings on music and aesthetics. His shifting position as exemplar or bad example is demonstrated in texts by Charles Avison, William Crotch, Uvedale Price, Sir John Hawkins and Charles Burney. Much like Arcangelo Corelli, another Italian with a strong absent presence principally mediated by print, Domenico Scarlatti had a powerful and lasting impact in England. This article presents an eighteenth-century portrait in absentia of the ‘English’ Scarlatti, suggesting how this elusive figure might be moved out of courtly isolation and into the thick of the eighteenth-century musical marketplace.

The theory of musical topoi (or topics) has emerged in recent decades as a powerful tool for the analysis of musical expression within tonal repertories. Largely originating in Leonard Ratner’s ground-breaking treatise Classic Music from 1980, it has since been considerably developed and extended by some of his students, especially Wye Allanbrook and Kofi Agawu. The theory has also stimulated considerable interest from music semioticians such as Robert Hatten, Márta Grabócz and Raymond Monelle, who find it a major resource for the investigation of extra-musical referentiality and meaning. Indeed, topical analysis may well be considered one of the success stories of modern musicology.

The year 1730 saw the Württemberg court (based at the magnificent palace of Ludwigsburg, some fifteen miles north of Stuttgart) promote Kammerjunker (gentleman-in-waiting) Christian Adolf von Ziegesar to the newly created position of aristocratic Obermusicdirector (chief music director). Since no template existed, the officials charged with drawing up his contract were instructed to make discreet enquiries regarding the same position at other ducal and electoral courts – a line of investigation that proved to be rather less than successful. One ‘Baron von Thüngen’, a Württemberg Kammerjunker with experience of a number of other courts (including Würzburg), reported unequivocally that to the best of his knowledge no court employed a nobleman in this position, but rather the directorship of musical matters was normally the responsibility of the Kapellmeister. Such a view appears to be confirmed by Julius Bernhard von Rohr (1688–1742) in his contemporary book on court ceremonial: he commented that a few places employed intendants des plaisirs charged with the overall supervision of large-scale divertissements, but made no mention of a similar position relating specifically to music.

Three posthumous documents not taken into account in the secondary literature on Mozart may offer insight into the last few years of the composer’s life. While these reminiscences do not solve any mysteries, they could eventually help to shed new light on significant but as yet unresolved biographical questions.

Anyone with an interest in Farinelli’s career is likely to be familiar with the sixty-seven surviving letters that he sent to his patron and friend Sicinio Pepoli of Bologna. They cover the years 1731 to 1749 and are now readily available in a scholarly edition prepared by Carlo Vitali. Although an examination of these letters makes it clear that Farinelli and Pepoli were acquainted with a circle of people who were closely connected with the Stuart, or Jacobite, court in exile, this has apparently gone unnoticed until now. Determining its significance will no doubt require further research, but my argument here is that the connection should henceforth be taken into account. In order to explain this point, the present article is divided into two parts. The first draws attention to the links between Pepoli, Farinelli and the Stuarts, and identifies the Italian members of the Jacobite court. The second recalls some well known facts about Farinelli’s later career which need to be reconsidered.

The popular conception of the eighteenth century as The Age of Reason has perhaps obscured the values cherished by many people at the time. The strength of its ‘legitimist political movements’ is hard for a modern mind to grasp. Even harder is the ‘political fantasy’ of the ‘renewed empire’ prophesied by Virgil. But these ideas were very real to the eighteenth-century mind. To this must be added the sacred nature of the ancient Orders of Chivalry and their origins in the Crusades, as well as their connections with the Templars and ancient Freemasonry. All this must be taken into account when considering Farinelli, his patrons and his colleague Domenico Scarlatti.