In March 1798 the violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti was expelled from Britain, suspected of being a Jacobin sympathizer. He was allowed to return to England in the summer of 1799 under circumstances that have remained vague to this day. In 1811 he was granted British denizenship, but only after petitioning the Crown. To understand the British Government’s determined stance against Viotti it is necessary to examine his life in Paris in the period 1789–92 – his friendship with the Jacobin journalist-diplomat Hugues Bernard Maret, his entrepreneurial activities, and his attempted takeover of the Paris Opera. These activities were remembered by two eccentric characters of the age, both spies for the British government. The first was an unscrupulous French ultraroyalist, the Comte d’Antraigues. The second was the dogmatic and at times irrational Englishman W.A. Miles, who was especially suspicious of Viotti’s pupil Pierre Rode, who made an unexpected landing in Britain in early 1798. In this article I re-examine the question of Viotti’s expulsion from Britain in light of new evidence against the violinist, some of it apparently damning, and attempt to determine once and for all whether the order was justified.

Recent investigations into the survival and dissemination of traditional songs have elucidated the intertwining relationship between print and oral song traditions. Musical repertories once considered distinct, namely broadside ballads and traditional songs, now appear to have inhabited a shared space. Much scholarly attention has been focused on the print and oral interface that occurred in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.

Less attention has been paid, however, to music in Ireland where similar economic, cultural and musical forces prevailed. Yet, Ireland’s engagement in various nationalist activities throughout the nineteenth century added a distinctly political twist to Ireland’s print–oral relationship. Songbooks, a tool for many nineteenth-century nationalist movements, often embodied the confluence of print and oral song traditions. Lacking musical notation, many songbooks were dependent on oral traditions such as communal singing to transmit their contents; success also depended on the large-scale distribution networks of booksellers and ballad hawkers. This article seeks to explore further the print–oral interface within the context of Irish nationalism. Specifically, I will examine how one particular movement, Young Ireland, manifested this interface within their songbook, Spirit of the Nation. By examining the production, contents, and ideology of this songbook, the complex connections between literature, orality and nationalism emerge.

Shortly after Beethoven’s death, several of his closest associates provided performance indications for editions of his works. Previous discussions of Carl Czerny’s and Ignaz Moscheles’s metronome marks for Beethoven’s piano sonatas have highlighted the importance of these indications for our understanding of the intended performance practice of these works. Nevertheless, the provenance and meaning of these metronome marks have remained unclear, which has led to some confusion in the literature.

By presenting new evidence, including the discovery of what are most likely the metronome marks intended for the missing sonatas from the first ‘complete’ edition by Tobias Haslinger, the article presents a more complete overview of the indications in these editions, as well as their chronology. In addition, it also discusses to what degree the editors seem to have influenced each other, which indications are most likely representative of Beethoven’s intended speeds, as well as why the metronome fell out of favour later in the nineteenth century. Finally, it discusses the meaning of these metronome marks for modern performers, and how these editions give options to disentangle the author from the text.

Gustav Jenner (1865–1920) was Brahms’s only long-term composition student. Jenner, an outspoken proponent of the conservative musical values he shared with Brahms, left numerous songs and pieces for chorus, piano, chamber ensembles and orchestra. Despite his obvious stylistic affinities to Brahms, it is clear from Jenner’s prose writings that he placed high value on artistic independence. Although scholars have noted the circumstances surrounding Jenner’s interactions with Brahms between 1888 and 1895 and Brahms’s general aesthetic influence on the young man, Jenner’s music – and particularly its relationship to that of Brahms – has received scant attention. Deeper comparison of the two composers’ works yields insights into not only how Brahms influenced less prominent composers in his circle and in the generation that followed him, but also the extent and nature of Brahms’s direct influence as a teacher.

This article compares Jenner’s only complete orchestral piece, his Serenade in A major (1911–12), with its most obvious precedents, Brahms’s orchestral serenades. Although correlations in general style are numerous, discrepancies arise naturally. Jenner furthermore avoids Brahms’s most distinctive compositional choices and takes care not to rely too heavily on any one Brahmsian model for his own Serenade, suggesting his desire to distinguish himself and a wariness of the inevitable comparisons with the works of his teacher. Thus we find in Jenner’s work the same dual emphasis on musical tradition and independence emphasized both in Jenner’s prose writings and in the music of Brahms himself.