Johann Strauss Sr's most famous composition, his 1848 Radetzky March, was premièred during revolutionary times. The March soon became a standard piece for Habsburg bands in the nineteenth century and was considered ideal for fostering patriotic sentiments at the start of the First World War. After the Great War, however, commentators portrayed the work very differently. No longer a part of contemporary culture, the Radetzky March now belonged to a bygone era. Biographers of the Strauss family found this work to be proof of Strauss Sr's support for the conservatives during the Revolution, a claim not supported by evidence. More generally, treating the piece as a relic from another age transformed it into a marker of nostalgia in the 1930s, as is best demonstrated in Joseph Roth's novel, Radetzkymarsch (1932).

The years from 1795 to 1815, which separated the height of Cimarosa's career from the beginning of Rossini's, represent a watershed in the history of Italian opera, for they brought the final stages of the transition from Metastasian opera seria to nineteenth-century melodramma. Such now obscure composers as Simon Mayr, Ferdinando Paer, Niccolò Zingarelli and Stefano Pavesi – and their librettists – shaped this transition, and their works embody the continuities of development which link those very different operatic traditions. Consequently, these works hold the key to understanding the genesis of conventions which have habitually been attributed to Rossini and provide for modern scholars an essential context for assessing Rossini's particular role in establishing the new operatic prototypes.

Cornelius Cardew named his monumental graphic score Treatise after Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophical masterpiece Tractatus logico-philosophicus, and this well-known fact has engendered speculation about whether there might be other connections between Cardew’s composition and Wittgenstein’s book. Previous commentaries have focused on possible allusions to the Tractatus in the visual imagery employed by Cardew, and this article includes further suggestions of this type. However, it concentrates on more general affinities between Treatise, as Cardew conceived of it prior to his involvement with the free improvisation group AMM, and the philosophy adumbrated in the Tractatus. Foremost among these is a striking concordance between Cardew’s initial enthusiasm for an isomorphic mode of interpreting Treatise and Wittgenstein’s picture theory of the proposition. The article also excavates traces of the picture theory in the numerological basis of Volo solo, a more conventionally notated by-product of the Treatise project.

This article offers a contextual reading of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's and Richard Strauss's 1927 opera Die ägyptische Helena. For Hofmannsthal and Strauss, the marital rift between Menelas and Helena caused by her infidelity operated as the symbolic manifestation of a similar schism in pan-Germanic politics, society and the arts – thus highlighting the concomitant necessity for unity through recognition and celebration of a common culture. By recasting the story of Menelas's and Helena's homeward journey from Troy in order to create an aesthetic answer to the problems of the present, Hofmannsthal and Strauss pointed to the distinct similarities between the Trojan War and the recent conflict that had completely changed the political, geographical and social landscape in Europe. As this article demonstrates, Die ägyptische Helena stands as an artwork both expressly aware and uniquely representative of its historical moment through a multi-faceted literary and musical referentiality inherently characteristic of its creators.

Musicology has recently re-evaluated the nature, form and purpose of musical biography, reflecting a broader ‘biographical turn’ in the humanities. This article takes up recent challenges to move beyond the traditional model of the ‘life and works’ of ‘great’ composers and joins the search for new paradigms of musical biography. The lives of the Australian microtonal composer Elsie Hamilton (1880–1965) and the British music archaeologist Kathleen Schlesinger (1862–1953), and their collaboration, which spanned three decades, are offered as a case study that demonstrates the importance of international and transnational networks for comparative musicology and modern music, and reveals the role of women as critical agents of scholarship and cultural transmission. It also lays bare the considerable influence exerted by the fin de siècle occult revival upon the search for new modalities of musical expression. It is an example of how a biographical approach allows an expansive examination of a mentalité and can bring together a range of discourses to reveal unrecognized connections and relationships.

This article explores the first attempt to reform Handelian oratorio, by the Revd John Brown, in 1763. Concerned about the waning popularity and literary flaws of Handel's works, Brown launched a reform campaign through his own oratorio The Cure of Saul, performed at Covent Garden Theatre, and the publication of A Dissertation on […] Poetry and Music. He also produced the first monograph of oratorio criticism, An Examination of the Oratorios which have been performed this Season, at Covent-Garden Theatre (1763). Published within weeks of one another, the three works shaped an intellectual offensive with aesthetic and moral goals mounted on an educational platform. Although a failure, Brown's attempt reflected Britain's national anxiety in the wake of the Seven Years War.

Alfred, Dvořåk's first opera, has long hovered at the edge of our awareness of the composer. If there are signs of a growing realization that opera was to Dvořåk quite as important as other areas of his output, the detail needed to flesh out the picture of ‘Dvořåk the opera composer’ is to a large extent lacking. In the case of the composer's first six operas the inaccessibility of material has meant that an assessment of his early work in the area is still very much the province of specialist scholars. Published vocal scores exist for only three of these early operas, and none of them are in any sense scholarly editions; in the case of Krål a uhlíř (King and Charcoal-Burner) the available edition is of a revision of the score made 13 years after the work was composed, with an entirely recomposed final act. Vanda, the fascinating first version of Krål a uhlíř, and Alfred remain unpublished, although a vocal score of Krål a uhlíř has been submitted to the Czech publishing house Artia.

Umkhosi wokukhahlela is an annual ceremony in the KwaBhaca Great Kingdom (Eastern Cape, South Africa) that celebrates virginity among young women and girls. Not regularly practiced for decades, it has recently made a comeback, having been strategically adopted by King Madzikane II as a tool of empowerment in the fight against the HIV pandemic, the rise in teen pregnancies, rape and school dropouts, as well as the abuse of women in general. This article investigates the return of Umkhosi wokukhahlela through Antonio Gramsci’s notion of ‘articulation’. As we shall see, the ritual is a particularly engaging and thoroughgoing example of how local communities intertwine the past with the present to reshape their own identity, borrowing from tradition to articulate specific life lessons germane to the present – and future – of the Bhaca people.

One of the less studied aspects of post-war musical life is private sponsorship of American modernist composers, such as that by the Fromm Music Foundation (FMF) established in 1952. Using unpublished letters and documents from the FMF archives at Harvard and interviews with people who worked with the founder, Paul Fromm, this article discusses how Fromm's involvement in his foundation led to ventures that were influential on the development of American contemporary music and its relationship to academia. Unlike the Ford or Rockefeller foundations, Fromm sought the role of patron, fostering close relationships with composers and accepting their advice. Yet composers in Fromm's network often had aesthetic visions that were different from his. This article discusses Fromm's sponsorship of the Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies and the journal Perspectives of New Music, and how the different, complex and contradictory visions held by Fromm and his advisers were representative of those in the larger American music scene.

When I was invited two years ago to read a paper on some subject connected with the research work on which I was then engaged, I felt a certain hesitation about doing so. For I naturally assumed that in the case of Beethoven a good deal of ground must have already been covered by earlier contributors. But on looking up the records of the Royal Musical Association I discovered to my surprise that since 1874, the year of its foundation, only six papers had been read on subjects closely relating to Beethoven (and in one of these he shares the honours with Mozart). Six papers in 88 years! And, what is even more startling, not one has been read since 1927, the centenary of Beethoven's death, that is to say, for the last 35 years. I need hardly add that such an apparent lack of interest in the life and work of this composer prompted me to make some amends, however small, for an indignity amounting almost to lèse-majesté.

The death, on 14 August 1587, of Guglielmo Gonzaga Duke of Mantua and Monferrato, heralded a sudden shift in the political, economic and artistic policies of the Duchy. His successor, Vincenzo, had notions of a Mantuan role in the peninsular greatly disproportionate to the size of its territory and population, and it was undoubtedly an important part of his conception that the Gonzaga should be seen as patrons of the arts on a scale compatible with these ambitions. During the 1580s, Vincenzo had conspicuously preferred the hedonistic atmosphere of Ferrara and Florence to the Counter-Reformation gloom of his father's court, and in the years immediately after his accession began to import cultural fashions from these other centres. One important change in the musical establishment was the formation, probably completed by April 1589, of a permanent ensemble of virtuoso singers on the Ferrarese model. Another was the rejuvenation of theatre and spectacle at court, culminating in the presentation of opera and ballet during the carnival seasons of 1607 and 1608 and the wedding celebrations of the latter year. The following considers one aspect of this revived interest in music and spectacle, the attempted productions of Battista Guarini's Il pastor fido during the 1590s. The first section deals with the problems surrounding the gestation of the play, the attempted productions and the surviving music. The second considers some of the novel aspects of that music in relation to other traditions.

I am sure that no one of the party of American visitors to which I have the honour to belong could open his lips on this occasion without first of all trying to express something of our hearty appreciation of the innumerable and overwhelming courtesies that have been heaped upon us ever since we set foot on English soil. It falls to others who can do it more gracefully than I to make the ampler acknowledgments that are due for most of these beautiful attentions. But I cannot begin this paper without tendering to the Council and the members of this famous Association a word of special recognition of the peculiar honour you have done us in asking us not only to be your guests this evening, but to participate formally in your deliberations. It would surely have been enough if you had permitted us to attend simply as listeners. But you have insisted with a cordiality which we cannot doubt that we should do more. And, while the duty is to us a most delicate and difficult one, we could not but accept it, believing that somewhere in the symphonic outburst of hospitable good-will with which we have been greeted, there would be the reassuring strain of kind forbearance for any failure on our part fittingly to discharge the obligation so courteously laid upon us.

Before I start on the main body of what I have to say, a few words of explanation are perhaps necessary.

First of all, with regard to the limits which I have set myself. You will have seen the dates—1870–1895—and possibly wondered at their apparent arbitrariness. But all I could hope to do here is to trace the main outlines of the first stage of France's musical revival. Debussy is only just on my map; Ravel, Roussel and even the later Fauré quite off it. But by 1895 all the main contributory elements which formed these later styles had made their appearance. Satie and Chabrier—the models acclaimed by a later generation—were active before Franck was dead: the Schola Cantorum was founded in the same year as Debussy's Après midi d'un faune appeared—in 1894. These twenty-five years are not the most glorious: much of the music was still tentative and the sense of national style was by no means complete. But because they were years of growth they are particularly worthy of sympathetic study.

The first necessity in a paper of this nature is to offer some definition of the term ‘Mannheim concerto’. In the past there has been some tendency to view the musicians working at the Palatinate court during the reign of the Elector Karl Theodor from 1743 to 1778, and the last years of his predecessor Karl Phüipp, as a somewhat isolated school. It is clear, however, from the studies of Hugo Riemann and more recently Gerhard Croll, that not only did the orchestral personnel come from many different parts of Europe, including Düsseldorf, Innsbruck, Vienna, Bohemia and Italy, over a period of many years, but that they were also constantly leaving Mannheim for posts elsewhere, or else going on often lengthy concert tours, especially to Paris, which throughout the period remained the great centre of attraction for the Mannheimers in view of its important publishing trade and flourishing concert life, both public and private. In addition, the Elector, who in musical matters was certainly among the more enlightened and generous rulers of his day, was continually sending promising young musicians off on study tours to Italy to complete their musical education. Among such musicians can be counted Christian Cannabich, Johann Ritschel and Georg Joseph Vogler. Thus the musical contacts with the outside world were indeed wide, and it is often impossible to tell whether particular concertos were composed for Mannheim, Paris or elsewhere, especially as the Mannheim court music library has long since totally disappeared, and we now rely on the relatively few printed sources and the manuscript copies to be found distributed throughout Europe. For present purposes the term ‘Mannheim concerto’ will be taken to include all concertos by composers whose activities were centred for a substantial time at the Mannheim court, and will thus include the works of those such as Carl and Anton Stamitz, the sons of Johann, who spent their formative years within the Mannheim circle, even though they both left Mannheim in 1770.

Vaughan Williams's music divides fairly easily into three Beethovenian periods: the works written up to 1914, which include several of his most deservedly popular and lyrical works; those written between the two wars, when he was striking out in several new directions; and the final period, from the Second World War to his death in 1958, during which he became even more prolific. His reputation rests on the nine symphonies, on the ballet Job, which like Elgar's Falstaff is of symphonic stature, on his operas and on a number of large-scale choral works. Also, of course, on the delightful songs which first made his name a household word.

The vocal music of William Byrd consists of the Latin Masses and motets, a comparatively small amount of Anglican church, music, and a substantial body of ‘secular’ compositions. Among the latter, settings of psalms and spiritual texts abound, but they were designed for a secular context and rarely taken over for church use; their musical style confirms their non-liturgical character. The numbers of works involved, though approximate on account of doubtful attributions and incomplete sources, are nevertheless instructive: there are three Masses and about 180 motets; the Anglican works comprise two complete services, two evening services, some smaller liturgical items and probably no more than twenty anthems; the secular vocal music amounts to almost 160 pieces. Often extending to two or more sections, the motets generally dwarf the songs, many of which are single-stanza settings. Even so, this last number indicates a degree of involvement sometimes not appreciated by those who comment on Byrd's music.

Two centuries claim Beethoven for their own—two centuries which in the history of music will always appear as very opposites, close though their relations are: the eighteenth century with its worship of form, the nineteenth with its worship of the idea. In Beethoven both meet, in him both find their greatest representative—in him first, and in him alone, their leading principles become reconciled. He is the only composer in whose works the great ideas which were agitating his time, some of the problems which have occupied man's mind since the beginning of man's history, have found an echo. Not that he deliberately took as it were those ideas and problems as the text of his compositions, but so much had he thought about them, so deeply was he imbued with their importance, so much had they become keynotes of his mode of feeling, so much in fact part and parcel of his personality, that the freer the expression he allowed to the latter in his music, the more was it bound to reflect those ideas. At the same time, it was Beethoven who put the last finishing touches to the grand edifice of musical forms, the material for which had been brought together in hundreds of years of slow, persistent, and consistent work, till in Ph. E. Bach, in Haydn, and in Mozart arose the architects who with master-hands were to shape and fix its outlines for all time. Beethoven accepted the forms from them, but soon he began to alter and to extend them: again not because he deliberately wished to improve on his predecessors, but because he did not find these forms an adequate medium for the expression of his individuality. It was in obedience to the demands of the latter that the inherited forms gradually assumed a new aspect altogether, gradually gained that power and pliability which enabled them to give voice to every shade of feeling with a directness, an intensity and subtleness which they had never been thought capable of.