In the 1890s, two musicians travelled between Britain and South Africa. One was the first examiner to travel abroad to examine for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, Franklin Taylor. At the same time as Taylor’s arrival in the Cape in 1894, a black South African composer, John Knox Bokwe, prepared to republish a tonic sol-fa hymnal containing many hymns that eventually became popular in Britain, to which Bokwe travelled multiple times. Although these narratives might appear to reflect highly divergent contexts for musical experience, the fluctuating constructions of imperial authority encountered in the careers of both these men link their stories together more deeply than their geographical and cultural disparities set them apart. The synchronous presentation of their stories in this article thus raises questions of how music emerged as a metaphor for constructions of imperial knowledge across shifting cultural boundaries.

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 Using unpublished letters and documents from the FMF archives at Harvard and interviews with people who worked with the founder, Paul Fromm, this article discusses how Fromm's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 speak of the recorder as a musical instrument, I do so knowing that you cannot fail to have heard the instrument at some time, as it is now once again an integral part of our musical life.

The music we are going to hear this evening is really the fulfilment of a desire expressed by this Association nearly thirty-one years ago. After a paper on the subject of lute-music by Miss Janet Dodge, Mr. James Matthew said: “We were many of us rather hoping we might have the pleasure of hearing the actual instrument,” and Dr. Southgate added “We should of course have liked to hear the lute.” But in those days much patient effort had still to be made before the art of lute-playing (distinct from a kind of bastard imitation on the guitar) could be said to have been fully recovered; and so they had to be content with a piano. Even to-day, the sound of the lute will be strange and unknown to most of us here; and as I am convinced that any critical discussion of music for an unknown instrument can only be misleading, I have asked Mrs. Poulton to play the very generous programme you have before you, in the hope that you will be able to gain some clear idea how this music really sounded at the hands of its composers.

The subject of Orchestral and Choral Balance has by no means received the attention due to it from concert-givers, conductors, writers on music, or the public. It has occasionally called forth a casual remark from Press critics when something beyond the ordinary has been noticeable in a performance; writers on orchestration have touched upon it to some extent, and an occasional lecture has been devoted to it; but in nearly every case there has been a mere nibbling at the fringe of a great subject. Even where a general survey has been attempted, it has often taken the form of a sermon preached upon some definite text, such as, for example, the otherwise valuable paper read by Professor Prout before the last Conference of the Incorporated Society of Musicians. In that paper, Dr. Prout showed that his choice of the subject was due to his having noticed a few bad examples of ill-considered balance between choir and band, where the choir was numerically much too strong for the orchestra, such as at the Handel Festivals, to a smaller extent in the Albert Hall, and to a still smaller extent at the Festivals of Birmingham and Leeds. But this is only one aspect of the subject. And though one must admit that the indictment against these performances was justified, I fail to see any justification for a general attack in the same direction upon the relative proportions of bands and choirs in this country. It is sufficient to point out that though the band may be frequently overpowered by the choir at the Crystal Palace and at the Albert Hall, the complaint of many musicians who really know what they are talking about is that many choral societies are painfully overweighted by their accompaniments.

A short paper can give but a glimpse at the life of a professional musician who worked in London for over half a century. Baptised Domenico Carlo Maria, Dragonetti was born in the poor parish of St. Gervasio and St. Protasio (called St. Trovaso), Venice. As with most details of his early life, there are conflicting reports as to his date of birth. Vincent Novello gives 10 April 1763, but Caffi, the musical historian and friend of Dragonetti, gives 7 April. Other dates that are variously given include 1755 (a date which also appears on one of Dragonetti's bows, now in the author's possession), ‘1762 or 1764’, and 1771.

The modern choirboy is such a familar object, at any rate to those who go to Church, that it is not generally realised that he is in any sense an historical figure, and by some is even regarded as a necessary nuisance or as a person of no serious importance.

Yet in this familar figure we can, perhaps as nowhere else, see the living embodiment of some of those things which are most distinctively national in the music of our country.

Mily Balakirev, the leader of the small group of Russian nationalist composers nicknamed by Vladimir Stassov the ‘moguchaya kuchka’ (the 'mighty handful'), was a controversial figure in his lifetime, and has remained so ever since. What was it that led him to take such seemingly odd actions as his retirement from music at the age of 35 ? What induced him to quarrel with nearly all his former friends and sympathisers? Was he, as Gerald Abraham put it, a flawed genius ? Why did the great works which were expected from him never materialise in anything like the numbers that all his friends hoped for? Why were they nearly all profoundly disappointed that one whom they knew to be an outstanding composer failed (in their opinion) to achieve in the works he did produce that greatness which he exuded in their presence, 'bewitching' them, as Rimsky-Korsakov put it, with his magnetism and hypnotising them with the ‘incomparable beauty’, as Stassov wrote, of his extemporisations at the piano?

After the very erudite paper on the Genevan Psalter which was read before this Association (in June, 1918) by Dr. Woodward, there is very little ground left for me to cover.

The whole question of metrical psalmody has been so thoroughly ventilated by so many authorities that but for the little book we are to discuss this afternoon, I doubt if I should have had anything fresh to say to you.

More has been written about why Satie composed than about how he composed; about the aesthetic implications of his precursive art for the present century than about the techniques of his art itself. My aim is to attempt to redress the balance, in part at least; to try to focus on some of the problems Satie encountered as he sought to satisfy the increased demand for his music which followed his sudden rise to the forefront of public attention largely due to the efforts of Ravel, Ricardo Viñes and Jean Cocteau over the years 1911 to 1915. If I look to anything as a model, it is Patrick Gowers’ pioneering paper on ‘Satie's Rose Croix Music (1891–1895)’ which explored Satie's use of systematic harmonic devices, working methods and formal experiments from the evidence of his manuscript notebooks. To the best of my knowledge, no such complementary study relating to Satie's later years has yet appeared in print, though Gowers’ thesis’ does discuss Satie's compositional methods in the Nocturnes of 1919.

The subject of this lecture, because of its exotic nature, would appear, at first sight, to be of little moment to Westerners. For that reason it may be advisable to indicate why attention should be directed to this question quite apart from any intrinsic worth that it may have. The doctrine of the Éthos, so highly prized in the art of antiquity, has an abiding interest, and therefore one may assume that its history may have a similar attraction. As Jules Combarieu pointed out not long since,∗ the doctrine of the Éthos had its origin in magic, and I take the liberty to draw up for you its genealogy, because, in the subject under discussion, it plays an important part.

Some time ago, in collaboration with Professor Read of St. Andrews, I was engaged in the transcription of some music contained in a book on Alchemy by one Michael Maier. The book, entitled Atalanta fugiens, was published near Frankfort in 1618. It contained fifty Discourses on Alchemy, each being preceded by a woodcut, an epigram in doubtful Latin verse and the first couplet of each of the latter set to music in canon; all the canons being written above, below, or around the same Canto Fermo. I had intended to speak of the music to-day, but as most of what I should have said has recently appeared in Professor Read's book Prelude to Chemistry, in which some of the canons are reproduced, I did not feel justified in repeating matter so recently issued in print. I have the book here and shall be glad to show it to anyone caring to see it at the close of the proceedings.

The abundant leisure of Eastern life affords ample opportunity for the study of the curious customs, the cultured arts, the profound sciences of the people, who are never slow to extend to the Western, who dwells, though but for a few years, among them, the graciousness of their hospitality; and to open freely the treasure-houses wherein the stores of their learning lie hoarded. But you will well understand that difficulties innumerable impede the acquisition of exact information by those who are ignorant of the languages. So much of Eastern learning is traditional, so much of the practice is hereditary, that it is of first importance to acquire it only from those who are in the direct succession of knowledge. When they are discovered, and the necessary formal introductions have been accomplished in accordance with the rigour of native etiquette, a fresh difficulty arises which is in truth a very labour of Sisyphus, so often has the stone of knowledge to be rolled over the same ground. The interpreter must possess not only a good knowledge of English, but also a quick intelligence to grasp the technicalities of the subject, the double set of art terms used by the questioner and the questioned. In such a subject as music, where each can only use those terms with which he is familiar, you will easily understand the patience necessary to arrive at facts, the prolonged process of sifting to which all statements have to be subjected, and the almost indefinite postponement of conclusions.

For most of us, singer and musicologist alike, English song from the death of Purcell to the Victorian ‘renaissance’ nearly two centuries later is represented by a few of the Shakespearean settings of Arne, and a small handful of such perennial favourites as Leveridge's ‘Black-ey'd Susan’, Boyce's ‘Heart of Oak’, Dibdin's ‘Tom Bowling’, and Horn's once-ubiquitous ‘Cherry ripe’. As for our knowledge of the cultural environment in which such pieces naturally have their place, that is generally more limited still. Though theatrical in origin, we may take as typical of the sort of vocal melody which was popular with early Georgian audiences, Arne's charming ‘O come, o come, my dearest’ from The Fall of Phaeton (1736). If we agree, with Ernest Walker, that such a song is, in its way, ‘a sparkling polished little gem’, then it may be fairly maintained that English song during the first half of the eighteenth century is a veritable treasure trove of delightful music—none of it very ‘great’, certainly, but much of it worthy of a better fate than the oblivion to which it has been carelessly consigned.

In 1892 Bernard Bosanquet wrote:

As a Hegelian, Bosanquet had every reason to believe in the strength of the German idealist tradition, even if its supremacy was seriously challenged in the second half of the nineteenth century; as an Englishman, and brought up in the English philosophical tradition, he was fully aware of the important British contribution to both speculative and experimental psychology. However, bringing various intellectual and philosophical traditions together is no easy task and we can witness a continuing division in the orientation of many scholars who, although not philosophers themselves, felt the need to strengthen their critical theories with ideas which originated in the domain of philosophy.

It so happened that my first acquaintance with English music of the time of Queen Elizabeth was made, not with the madrigal, but with the music of the virginals. I have devoted one of my former books to virginal music, and it is my pleasant duty to admit that the authors really responsible for that work are two members of your Association, Mr. Fuller-Maitland and Mr. Barclay Squire. In fact, without their edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, with its great store of learning, I should not have been able to write the greater part of my book.

When the meal drew to a close the lady who had served the wine produced a harp and began to play it so sweetly that it was a wondrous thing to hear. So Sir Gawayn listened to her very willingly for a while until he began to feel the cold, for his tunic was not at all well dried. And when the cold got to him he rose up and went to the great fire which was in the middle of the Hall and took a stool and sat down before the fire, turning his shoulder and his back [to the flames] and warmed himself until he slept, as one who had been afflicted the whole day with the rain and the wind.

This article considers why septuple metres are so rare in Western music, despite being common in many other cultures. The scene is set by tracing the history of the septuple-time ‘meme’ (an idea that replicates by imitation) from ancient Greece through to Western art and popular music. The following sections consider the psychological, musical and environmental factors in more detail. The scarcity of septuple time in Western music is largely attributable to the development of the time signature, as a vertical conception of music evolved during the Renaissance. Subsequent evolution of the ‘Western music memeplex’ maintained septuple time on its periphery. Analysis of this interaction permits the construction of a meme-centred narrative of aspects of the development of Western music.

The reception history of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies in America offers striking evidence of multiple, previously unidentified, Continental and English connections to the musical thought of John Sullivan Dwight (1813–93), the first American-born critic of art music, and therefore to early American conceptions of the symphony in the 1840s. These direct links illuminate the history and criticism of the first performance in America of Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125, which took place in New York in 1846. From the many sources associated with Dwight's musical learning and aesthetic education, I have chosen in this article to examine Dwight's literary interest in Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller's poem ‘An die Freude’ and in Thomas Carlyle's biography of Schiller, to document his knowledge of commentary on the symphony by the German critic Adolf Bernhard Marx, and to describe Dwight's response to the initial American performance of the Ninth Symphony.