EARLY MUSICPub Date : 2023-11-10DOI: 10.1093/em/caad049
Joseph M Ortiz
{"title":"<i>Nec doctum satis</i>: humanist translation and English recreational song","authors":"Joseph M Ortiz","doi":"10.1093/em/caad049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad049","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Studies of the literary dimensions of English Renaissance madrigals frequently cordon off these works from non-musical forms, such as the prosodic experiments being carried out by humanist poets or the humanist practices of literary translation and imitation. Conversely, studies of humanist translation in England almost never consider recreational song, instead focusing exclusively on more ‘serious’ genres. However, several collections of recreational song published in the period present these songs as legitimate humanist works. In some cases, these collections offer the first English translations of classical and Renaissance poems. Nicholas Yonge’s Musica transalpina (1588) and Thomas Watson’s Italian madrigalls Englished (1590), for example, call attention to their translations of eminent Italian poets (Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso) and address themselves to classically learned readers. The humanist character of such anthologies was well enough known to be satirized by Thomas Weelkes in his Ayeres and phantasticke spirites (1608), whose classical references have seldom been seriously considered. At the heart of these exchanges is an implicit debate over whether recreational song texts are an appropriate vehicle for humanist learning.","PeriodicalId":44771,"journal":{"name":"EARLY MUSIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135185975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EARLY MUSICPub Date : 2023-11-03DOI: 10.1093/em/caad041
Thomas McGeary
{"title":"Miscellany on the London stage","authors":"Thomas McGeary","doi":"10.1093/em/caad041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad041","url":null,"abstract":"Journal Article Miscellany on the London stage Get access Alison C. DeSimone, The power of pastiche: musical miscellany and cultural identity in early eighteenth-century England. Studies in British Musical Cultures (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2021), $143 Thomas McGeary Thomas McGeary thomas_mcgeary@hotmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8337-7361 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, caad041, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad041 Published: 03 November 2023","PeriodicalId":44771,"journal":{"name":"EARLY MUSIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135874681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EARLY MUSICPub Date : 2023-10-31DOI: 10.1093/em/caad032
Joshua Rifkin
{"title":"Singing nuns? More on the story of Verona 761","authors":"Joshua Rifkin","doi":"10.1093/em/caad032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad032","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Considers recent arguments about the choirbook Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, Ms. dccxli, and a convent in the city where it resides.","PeriodicalId":44771,"journal":{"name":"EARLY MUSIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135977255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EARLY MUSICPub Date : 2023-10-30DOI: 10.1093/em/caad043
Jamie Savan
{"title":"<i>Poca robba, ma buona</i>: the recorded legacy of ornamentation practice in 16th- and 17th-century music","authors":"Jamie Savan","doi":"10.1093/em/caad043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad043","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44771,"journal":{"name":"EARLY MUSIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136106008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EARLY MUSICPub Date : 2023-10-25DOI: 10.1093/em/caad039
Colin Timms
{"title":"Steffani’s <i>Amor vien dal Destino</i>: new answers to old questions","authors":"Colin Timms","doi":"10.1093/em/caad039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad039","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Steffani made an important contribution to the cultivation of Italian opera in north Germany. Amor vien dal Destino must have been composed at Hanover in the 1690s but was not performed until 1709, at Düsseldorf. Several questions arise. Was it meant for 1694, the only year during his period at Hanover when there was no opera at the court? If so, why was it not performed? Why was it not performed before 1709? Why was it then staged at Düsseldorf? Why and how was the opera revised for that production? Who were the singers involved? Answers emerge from consideration of the Düsseldorf wordbook (especially its preface), of the autograph score and a hitherto neglected manuscript copy in Hanover, and of the circumstances of the two courts concerned. If these answers are correct, they demonstrate a close relationship between the opera and its social and political context.","PeriodicalId":44771,"journal":{"name":"EARLY MUSIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135218556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EARLY MUSICPub Date : 2023-08-07DOI: 10.1093/em/caad013
Jeffrey Levenberg
{"title":"Romanizing Chinese: word–tone relations in Athanasius Kircher’s <i>China illustrata</i>","authors":"Jeffrey Levenberg","doi":"10.1093/em/caad013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract When Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit missionaries landed in China in the late 16th century, they heard a language they could not readily reproduce in their own tongue. Unlike Latin and the Romance languages, Chinese is a tone language, in which the meaning of a word varies according to its relative pitch level. In order to Romanize Chinese, the Jesuits applied their knowledge of music theory and assigned solmization syllables to the Chinese tones. Although their manuscript musical dictionary remains lost, the essence of it is preserved in print in the most widely disseminated treatise on China of the time: China illustrata (1667), by the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. To date, sinologists have generally dismissed Kircher’s musical Chinese as unintelligible. Musicologists, meanwhile, having long poured over Kircher’s Musurgia universalis (1650), have yet to offer a detailed critique of China illustrata. In reapproaching this singular source in Sino-Western history, this article argues that the Jesuits’ musical representation of the Chinese language should not be rejected a priori. Kircher’s cryptic description of Chinese can, in fact, be clarified by a letter from Beijing in which a Jesuit spelled out the Chinese tones in musical staff notation. A musical analysis of the lead illustration in China illustrata—the Nestorian Stele of Xi’an—indicates that the Jesuits’ solmizations were closer approximations of Chinese than one might assume. Off-tone though it might at first appear, China illustrata is a valuable record of how the Jesuits Romanized Chinese.","PeriodicalId":44771,"journal":{"name":"EARLY MUSIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135903263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EARLY MUSICPub Date : 2023-08-06DOI: 10.1093/em/caad011
D. Burrows
{"title":"King George III and the ‘Smith Collection’ of Handel manuscripts","authors":"D. Burrows","doi":"10.1093/em/caad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The run of morocco-bound manuscript scores of Handel’s oratorios and church music from the Royal Music Library, named the ‘Smith Collection’ by William Barclay Squire in 1927, was assembled as a set for King George III in the early years of his reign. Some of the volumes have year-dates for copying from the period 1766–70, but the sequence also incorporates earlier volumes that originated from the library of the king’s father (Frederick, Prince of Wales, d.1751), partially documented in a sale advertisement by a bookseller soon after Handel’s death. Squire believed that the series had been the property of John Christopher Smith and had been given to the king with the collection of Handel’s autograph scores in the 1770s. Newly identified documents from the Royal Library, now at Windsor, record payments for the copying of many of the scores and enable an alternative reconstruction of the history of the collection under the king’s influence, beginning in 1765–6. They also raise new questions about the identity of the music copyist ‘Mr Teede’. The completion of the series took place in the early 1770s, probably before the king received the autographs. For the shelves in George III’s library the oratorios were arranged in chronological order, but the diverse origins of the volumes had the result that, although the bindings were in similar styles, their sizes were not uniform.","PeriodicalId":44771,"journal":{"name":"EARLY MUSIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45334999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EARLY MUSICPub Date : 2023-08-06DOI: 10.1093/em/caad001
Blake Johnson
{"title":"Performer, composer and impresario: Thomas Vincent Jr. (c.1723–1798) and the oboe in London, 1748–1768","authors":"Blake Johnson","doi":"10.1093/em/caad001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Eighteenth-century writings about the oboe in London tend to focus primarily on two performers: Giuseppe Sammartini (1695–1750) and Johann Christian Fischer (1733–1800). As Sammartini died in 1750 and Fischer arrived in London only in 1768, this leaves much uncertain about the period of time which separated them. One of the leading oboists in the years following Sammartini’s death was Thomas Vincent Jr. (c.1723–98), a student of Sammartini’s. Vincent was later mentioned by both William Thomas Parke (1761–1847) and Charles Burney (1726–1814) as a prominent performer who was popular until the arrival of Fischer. Was Vincent a skilled performer who was eclipsed by Fischer’s more brilliant style or a performer of lesser abilities and outdated style? Or were writers such as Parke and Burney simply biased in Fischer’s favour? A study of Vincent’s performance activities, his abilities as evidenced by his compositions, and a consideration of the differing musical styles of Vincent and Fischer’s works will demonstrate that Vincent was a venerable performer-composer in his own right and that the preference for Fischer expressed by later writers was less a dismissal of Vincent than a reflection of changing musical tastes.","PeriodicalId":44771,"journal":{"name":"EARLY MUSIC","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44775089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}