At the outset, I should perhaps explain why I'm going to play the illustrations to this talk on the piano rather than on a harpsichord. In the first place, I only play the harpsichord as an amateur, and would feel abashed to display my shortcomings before an audience containing many eminent professionals. And secondly, since harpsichords are still comparatively few and far between, I'm anxious to suggest that students and performers can give great pleasure to themselves, and to others, by playing these works understandingly on whatever keyboard instrument happens to be available.

Hans Abrahamsen’s recent music has been the subject of much critical and public acclaim, with his output of the last decade finding a new directness of expression even as it incorporates and develops elements of his musical language that have remained consistent over many years. This article examines the use of compositional processes within a number of these large-scale works – Schnee (2008), Wald (2009), the Double Concerto (2011) and Let me tell you (2013) – and explores the ways in which Abrahamsen generates and controls material through a variety of techniques of transformation and repetition. How smaller-scale systems interact to create music of great allusive complexity is considered through discussion of the variation form of Wald; finally, Abrahamsen’s embracing of types of paradox and illusion are presented as strategies to unlock broader aesthetic issues within his music.

One hundred years ago, on the twenty-seventh of March, died Ludwig van Beethoven, a composer whom universal opinion has placed among the greatest men of all time. It is not my purpose to give a sketch of his life, but, as far as it lies within my power, to reconstruct his position in 1827; to explain his position in 1927; and to forecast his probable position in 2027.

Some months ago, during a conversation on Musical Form, the remark was made to me that the Rondo had been rather scantily treated in theoretical works; and that the portion of that great book on musical composition by Marx, which deals with this form, had never been translated into English. My friend went on to say, “Why should you not write a paper on the Rondo (taking Marx as your basis), and offer it to the Musical Association?” Acting on this suggestion I proceeded to write the paper, which with much diffidence I now offer you; and if it should give rise to a discussion in which further light may be thrown on the subject, I shall feel that it has not been written in vain.

When we listen to a piece of music, whether it be a fugue by Bach, a song by Schubert, or a symphony by Beethoven, the actual physical, objective, stimuli which reach our ears consist of incredibly complicated pulsations of air pressure. These produce equally complicated vibrations of the tympanum or ear-drum, and so set up successions of nervous impulses in the brain. But our subjective experience of the music, the thing that we actually hear, consists of a logical and meaningful sequence of harmoniously interrelated auditory impressions, possessing form and unity both as a whole and in detail. How then does this series of discrete air vibrations, which are produced by the musical instruments or voices of the performers, become transformed and organised into the mental thing that we call music? In other words, what is the psychological nature of our perception or cognition of music?

The subject of this paper, “Beauty of Touch and Tone,” is one which however admirably it may be exemplified in the public performances of many—unhappily not all—of our leading artists, however conscientiously it may be inculcated by our most eminent teachers, is, in the playing and singing of too many of our amateurs, conspicuous only by its absence; and I can but think that, from the generality of the members of the musical profession, it does not receive that amount of attention which its importance demands, and which the rapid extension of musical education in some other directions might lead us to expect.

More than fifty years since a violoncellist, who was distinguished for his discernment and the desire to encourage rising talent, gave to a young composer, who, though making his mark, was still little known, and quite in the struggling stage, a commission to write some small works for the violoncello, with pianoforte accompaniment. The means of the violoncellist were but limited, and the honorarium was probably of no great amount, though I feel sure the principle was acted on that “the labourer is worthy of his hire.” But it was the young composer's first commission, and right proudly did he go home that day at having a commission to write anything at all on any terms. The works produced were twelve Ariettes and three Rondos, very fresh and charming, although little known now. It was from a business point of view the commencement of a long, honourable, and though chequered and marked by many disappointments which had to be patiently borne, an eminently successful career as a composer. He looked back to it and referred to it with grateful recollection of the timely recognition and kindly held out helping hand. The appreciative violoncellist passed away forty years ago, but the young composer lived on, with recognition of his powers gradually accorded to him, and with increasing honour and acknowledgment, not only by his own countrymen, but wherever music is known throughout the world. He also has passed away full of years, and by a pleasant, though melancholy co-incidence, by quite the reverse of what is sometimes termed the irony of events, the son of that violoncellist has been honoured with the commission to offer the first publicly spoken tribute to the memory of him whom his father was one of the first to recognise. The violoncellist was Henry Joshua Banister, remembered by very few here, but remembered with respect and honour; the composer was George Alexander Macfarren, and the tribute offered with great diffidence this evening is offered with a desire to be in sympathy with the old injunction—“Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not,” or, as one may justifiably amplify it, “forget not,” for he to whom my father was a friend, was a friend to me all along his professional course, and it is peculiarly grateful to me that in consideration of these facts I have had entrusted to me this task, one of the greatest professional honours ever conferred upon me.

The principal aim of the present paper is to bring before the Musical Association some results obtained last autumn from numerous and very careful experiments by Dr. W. Preyer, Professor of Physiology in the University of Jena, because those results are not accessible in an English form, and seem to have a very practical bearing upon tuning and singing. My subordinate purpose is to exhibit a method of representing pitch and intervals, which shall be more consonant to the habits of musicians than that adopted by Dr. Preyer for the statement of his results. For the idea of this method I am indebted to Mr. Bosanquet, though I have worked it out somewhat differently from him.

There are some people who maintain that all translation of vocal music into other languages is barbarous, and that no opera ought ever to be performed except in the language to which it was written. This position is a perfectly logical one, and I can sympathise very cordially with it in theory; I would certainly say that for the detailed study and criticism of any opera a knowledge of it in the original language is indispensable. But for practical purposes translation is a necessity, if opera is to receive any popular encouragement. In France, Germany and Italy, as well as in other countries such as Holland, Sweden, Poland and Hungary, where the native language is not one that is commonly learned by foreigners, opera is regularly performed in the language of the people; it is therefore only commonsense that opera in England should be performed in English, at any rate in those theatres where opera is performed regularly throughout the season. I shall therefore assume that I need waste no more words this afternoon in defending the principle of opera in English. I must however, make it quite clear to you that my paper deals solely with the translation of operas, and that it will not treat at all of the translations of any other kind of vocal music. It is necessary for me to mention this, because the conditions of opera require methods of translation which would often be quite inappropriate, or even utterly inadmissible, in such forms as oratorios and single songs. In these branches of music I have little experience as regards translation, and I do not intend to discuss them at all.

The subject with which I have to deal this evening is a very complicated one, and the time at my disposal is very short, so that I can, at the best, give you but a brief outline of it. I will, therefore, not lose a minute upon any preliminary remarks, but proceed at once with my paper.

When, a year ago, I accepted the flattering invitation of your assistant secretary to read a paper before you, I did not, I am afraid, sufficiently realize the difficulties of the undertaking. Casting about for a subject, it gradually dawned upon me that any attempt on my part to convey original information would be futile; for, not having a claim to be considered a specialist in any one branch of the musical art, my efforts could only have resulted in the process familiarly known as “carrying coals to Newcastle.” As such a waste of time was not to be thought of, it finally struck me that if I could not impart information, I might at least be the means of eliciting it, by supplying materials for a profitable discussion, which in its turn might stimulate to further enquiry and investigation. This I resolved to do, and as a natural consequence directed myself to the discovery of some neglected or hitherto imperfectly treated subject. I submit that Musical Progress is such a subject, and that its neglect, however easily it might have been accounted for fifty years ago, by the difficulties which would then have stood in the way, is no longer justifiable at the present day.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,—When you did me the honour of asking me to exhibit my metronome this evening I was in hopes of having a new instrument made for the occasion, but my model-maker has found it impossible to get one completed in time. I must, therefore, ask your indulgence for some want of neatness, in size and other matters, in the one on the table, it being the first one of the kind made.

The date of the foundation of the first German Bach Society, 11 December, 1850, marks, by common consent, the birth of modern musical research. It preceded by less than a year the issue of the first volume of the first complete edition of Bach's works. This event had been foreshadowed by the editorial efforts of two generations of Bach scholars, and it had originated in England. It was there, not in Bach's native country, that A. F. C. Kollmann, K. F. Horn and Samuel Wesley planned and issued critical editions of certain keyboard works of Bach at the turn of the eighteenth century. Only thirty years later the Bach revival became an international cause with Felix Mendelssohn's memorable performance of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin on 11 March, 1829.

Half a century ago jazz was an obscure, regional American music. Today it can reasonably claim to be an international idiom. Jazz took shape in the southern part of the United States, the result of a fusion between Negro blues, ragtime and military march music, and for the past sixty years it has followed a pattern of development almost exactly similar to that of European music, but undertaken at a much more hectic speed. First came the beginning, in folk song. Next followed a polyphonic period, a period during which jazz evolved the New Orleans style of playing, with its improvising front line of trumpet, clarinet and trombone. The 1920s saw the introduction of written arrangements: on the one hand the organization of New Orleans jazz into a dramatic pattern by Jelly Roll Morton, the first authentic jazz composer; on the other, an increasing preoccupation with harmony, reflected in the growth of eleven- and twelve-piece ensembles. But for genuinely orchestral writing, jazz had to wait a few years longer, until Duke Ellington came to maturity as a composer, using timbres that were peculiar to the Ellington orchestra, building his scores around the talents of individual musicians.

In the British Museum (G. 40) are three part-books (bound together), containing six sonatas or suites, entitled: Suonate da camera a tre, doi Violini, Violoncello, e Cembalo, da Arcangelo Corelli da Fusignano, detto il Bolognese. Opera Quarta. Prima Parte. Nuovamente Ristampata. In Anversa, da Henrico Aertssens, Stampatore di Musica, all'Insegna del Monte Parnasso, 1692 Con Privilegio. The Cembalo part, with the figured Bass, is missing.

Erik Satie is now thought of as a precursor and a man of ideas whose unconventional career took its direction from his continual rethinking of every aspect of contemporary music and aesthetics, largely as a reaction to nineteenth-century tradition and excesses. Eugénie Satie-Barnetche, whose ultimate aim for her stepson was a brilliant career as a pianist with an official seal of approval from the Paris Conservatoire, provided just one example of such a tradition, whilst her husband Alfred, the gifted and impulsive dilettante and a Romantic at heart, might well be seen as another. In fact, it is easy to conclude that Eugénie's academic approach helped to turn Satie into a left-wing revolutionary, whilst the uninspired salon music of both his parents made him determined to become a serious professional composer. But that is by no means the whole story, for Erik was very close to his father, even if he disliked his stepmother, and Alfred's love of the music-hall (whose songs he both wrote and published) was enthusiastically inherited by his son. Even after Satie abandoned his work as a cabaret pianist around 1911, the influence of this popular medium still ran as a thread through his later compositions. Similarly, he was often forced to resort to his stepmother's profession of piano teaching to make ends meet, and in the 1920s he delighted in moving in the exalted social circles that his aspiring stepmother had only dreamt about as she mounted her bourgeois musical soirées in the Boulevard de Magenta in the 1880s. Like Alfred and Eugénie, Satie also spent much of his composing time with short piano pieces that he hoped would reach a popular market, and dance music runs as another thread throughout his career, just as it did in their own compositions. Above all, Satie's parents provided domestic surroundings in which music played a substantial part, with the emphasis on the present rather than the past, though it remained for Satie alone to take music into the future.

Embedded into the approaches to their crafts adopted inescapably by the composers and performance directors of church polyphony in England during the century or so before the Reformation were a number of constraints imposed by extraneous factors over which they had no control, but which effected a decisive influence over both the resulting form and the sound of the music which they produced in their respective capacities. Looming large among these was the nature of the performing medium. Over most aspects of this neither composer nor director exercised any influence at all; in terms of, for instance, the simple number of executants, they were obliged to produce music for and from the medium which their ecclesiastical superiors saw fit to provide, and the principal priority of the latter was the realization not of occasional polyphony for the liturgy, but of its standard plainsong and ceremonial as laid down by the authorized service books. Within these predetermined numbers of priests, clerks and choristers, however, the principal musicians presumably enjoyed some scope for nominating the constituent numbers of executants of the various timbres of voice necessary for mounting a performance of polyphony. The decisions taken by the musicians themselves in an area such as this that lay probably within their discretion have much to reveal about the nature of the choral balance and of the vocal scoring that they envisaged as appropriate for their music, and also – by inference from the latter – its sounding pitch.

The internationally known Londonderry Air carries the status of a cultural symbol of Ireland. Both its collector and its publisher claimed in 1855 that the music was very old, a belief which has passed into conventional wisdom. In 1934 and 1979 two writers cast doubts on the tune's age and suggested that its collector had more to do with the moulding of the tune than the process of tradition. Subsequently, doubts about the music have prevailed in academic circles but remained unexamined. This article queries the deductions of these writers and explores the musical origins and evolution of the Air. The methodology is historical and musicological. From an examination of collections of Irish traditional music evidence is presented in support of the tune's age and fashioning by tradition. The lost verses of a song known to have been accompanied by the tune in the nineteenth century are revealed as the likely original words to the music.

Robert Schumann's review of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique has attracted continued intensive scholarly attention since its serialized publication in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1835. There is a marked tendency in that attention to focus on a set of closely related critical themes: to use the review as a key to the German reception of Berlioz; to read it in terms of what it demonstrates about Schumann's own critico-aesthetic position; to see it as a model of music-critical practices in the first half of the nineteenth century; to scrutinize it in terms of the insights it furnishes into music-analytical practices. More recent scholarship has also added to this cluster of scholarly topoi the formal design of the text, its polyvalent texture and, in particular, what Fred Everett Maus terms ‘intersubjectivity’, scrutinizing the text for any clues it might offer as to the manner in which constructions of forms of subjectivity are engaged, sustained, problematized or subverted. Maus's attention to this ‘intersubjectivity’ stands as testament to musicology's (somewhat belated) interest in theories of subjectivity (or subjectivities), and opens Schumann's text to myriad new readings. In particular, Maus begins to tease out the text's potential as an artefact for the study of contemporaneous formations of ‘the composer’ as a cultural ‘type’ in the music-critical idiom.