Historically Informed Performance (HIP)

There is currently no direct source linked to J.S. Bach (1685-1750) himself that indicates his temperament preference. Thus for the tuning of keyboard compositions by J.S. Bach, the modern-day opinions have been and remain still divided.

The first part of the article gives original quotations (with translations) on musical temperaments from then well-known writers (from antiquity up to the 18th century), as well as those temperaments that were in use during J.S. Bach’s lifetime. This part of the article summarizes the main writers (and practitioners) from
1. Classical Antiquity;
2. The Middle Ages to 16th Century;
3. 17th century Netherlands;
4. 17th century France;
5. Early 17th century Germany
6. 17th and 18th century England
7. Late 17th century and 18th century Germany
8. The introduction of the equal temperament (gleich-schwebende Temperatur) in Germany in the 18th century
by writers such as Neidhardt, Sinn, Fux, Mattheson, Meckenheuser, Mizler, Sorge, Adlung, Silbermann, Fritz, Kirnberger, Marpurg and C.P.E Bach.

The second part of the article is a compilation of quotations (with translations) from the 18th-century that relate to J.S. Bach’s musical temperament as can be found in the Bach Documents.

It is important to read the first part of the article so as to obtain an understanding of what was considered “common knowledge” regarding temperaments during the first half of the 18th century. With this background (and common) knowledge it then becomes possible to contextualize the quotations in the second part of the article that relate to Bach's temperament.

The second version of this article has extended the information regarding Mersenne and the 17th century German writers. In addition, the second section now contains an added 18th century quotation which connects Bach with equal temperament and which is not included in the Bach-Dokumente,

Comments most welcome - please send an email to: bachstemperament@hotmail.nl

Over the past decade or so, historically informed theory, pedagogy, and (more recently) composition have emerged fully as outgrowths of the historically informed performance (HIP) movement, for which Bach’s music has been instrumental. In this light, “Bach in the music theory classroom” is a metaphor for a broader HI initiative, one where, in my own teaching, historically informed theory (HIT) becomes the basis for structuring a curriculum centered on period composition. In this article, I discuss the materials, process, rationale, and philosophical implications for a mini-curriculum that constitutes the first of a three-course HIT sequence. My aim with this first leg is to change students’ thinking from the “know-what” types of knowledge characteristic of present-day music theory curricula to a “know-how” mind-set consistent with eighteenth-century pedagogy.

The goals of music theory today approximate the reading knowledge of a language acquired in graduate school. Enough about its syntax, grammar, and vocabulary is learned to supply a translation, but without ever acquiring the knowledge and experience to speak, think, or write in the language itself. Score annotations and analyses, as ends in themselves, are like metalinguistic translations. In Bach’s day, on the other hand, music theory was the business of training musicians to speak the language, on the performance-improvisation-composition continuum that defined their daily activities. To implement a “know-how” curriculum in an environment designed for “know-what,” however, is not without its challenges, not least because of limited time and often resources.

I narrate how Bach himself offered me a solution through his own music and pedagogical materials. Rather than throwing students into the proverbial deep end, my mini-curriculum engages them actively and continuously in creative work. The goal is not to compose a self-standing composition, but to get students thinking in Bach’s language in terms of musical schemata, the everyday patterns and conventions of Bach’s day. I do so through a series of creative problem-solving activities that impart knowledge of schemata, particularly as they are used in Bach’s hands. Students are placed in Bach’s shoes as both a teacher and composer, by exploring the connections and differences among Bach’s figured basses from the Vorschriften und Grundsätze zum vierstimmigen spielen des General-Bass, the partimento-preludes of the Langloz manuscript, and certain preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier as well as selected fantasias. Through realization, analysis, and (class) composition exercises, students encounter a number of recurring schemata as a familiar cast of characters in these materials, all fashioned together into a modern-day Notenbüchlein or zibaldone (musical notebook), which tells a story about Bach’s schema usage—his compositional strategies employing schema development, elision, nesting, extension, and expansion.
The story culminates with Bach’s unique canonic treatment of a particular sequence, the 9/7–8/6/5. After ten weeks, students are able to realize a complex Bach partimento (BWV 908) and compose a continuo part for the Sanctus of the Mass in B Minor, for which no figures survive. These advanced creative problem-solving activities fill the last pages of the students’ Notenbüchlein, which is organized nearly single-handedly by Leipzig’s beloved Thomaskantor himself.

The keyboard toccatas of J. S. Bach, BWV 910-916, present a formidable challenge of interpretation to the modern-day performer. These works contain some of the most unusual compositional techniques to be found in Bach’s output due to their use of an improvisatory, virtuosic style inherited from the seventeenth century. While pianists of today are trained to perform with perfect fidelity to the score, the treatises from the time of Bach point to a rhythmically free approach to the improvisatory features of these toccatas. The goal of this treatise is to explore how the historical tradition from which Bach’s toccatas emerged influenced their stylistic characteristics with the purpose of applying this information to create an informed performance by today’s interpreters. In this effort, this treatise focuses on several broad categories in the process of understanding the inspiration and, therefore, the interpretation of these works. These categories include the genesis of the toccata as a genre, the compositional techniques associated with the toccata, Bach's personal contribution to the genre, and the interpretation of Bach's toccatas specifically.

"Did Bach indeed leave a record of how he tuned his keyboard instruments as Bradley Lehman's 2005 article, 'Bach's extraordinary temperament: our Rosetta Stone' would have us believe? With a bit of cloak and dagger work, can we get to the bottom of this Da Vinci Code of tuning secrets? Has a Bach temperament solution miraculously appeared by way of a tantalising hint Bach may have left for us at the top of the title page of The Well-Tempered Clavier  in the form of a cursive calligraphic flourish, a secret codified message, a memory jogging reminder; or was it even just a doodle?

Sadly, Lehman's "Bach temperament" is not only incomplete, but misleading, suggesting something which is neither probable, nor representative of the tuning traditions of Bach's time and likely vastly different from that which Bach knew, or used, or would have found acceptable. That the calligraphic scrolling glyph on the title page of The Well-Tempered Clavier is indeed a diagram of a temperament can be supported in that it can be broken down into structural elements which compare in structure and placement with intrinsic values of temperament intervals found elsewhere in the literature of the period. So how did he really tune his harpsichord?

This paper seeks to provide an overview of the Bach temperament issues raised by Bradley Lehman and attempts to provide an actual working historical temperament possibility as a Bach temperament. This paper is an abridged version and under review pending its full publication. In writing this paper I have carefully and intentionally avoided modern scholastic writings as much as possible and chosen to keep focus on historical work in order that subjective modern ideas not cloud the issues discussed. "

The third unit is about the Renaissance of the cathedral rite during the 13th and 15th centuries, after this tradition had disappeared during the exile of the Court and the Patriarchate at Nikaia. The acceptance of the oktoechos system was based on the monastic Round notation as the medium to integrate different traditions of the Byzantine empire: the monastic tradition of the chant books sticherarion and the heirmologion, and the cathedral rite with its chant books asmatikon and kontakarion. The synthesis was done by the establishment of psaltic art and an additional kalophonic way which was based on the traditional methods and their books, but at the same time also a field for experiments between the genres. The books of the papadic reform were akolouthiai, and additional editions of the old books such as sticherarion kalophonikon and heirmologion kalophonikon, but also the creation of revised editions of the old books sticherarion and heirmologion. According to Manuel Chrysaphes it was Ioannes Koukouzeles who invented the kalophonic method to sing the hymns of the sticherarion. His method was based on a didactic chant called “Mega Ison” which memorised all signs of Middle Byzantine notation. While Constantinople became a very advanced centre of Byzantine music with famous composers like Xenos Korones, Ioannes Glykys and Ioannes Kladas, other Poleis, Patriarchates, and peripheral territories within and beyond the Empire opposed to its innovations. A three-dimensional realisation of the trochos system offers an insight in the creative aspects of kalophonic art, and demonstrates the integrative role of eight diatonic echoi and two phthorai called by their intonation (echema) “nenano” and “nana”. Since the history of Constantinople was particular destructive, this lecture will also treat Mount Athos as a hidden place where lost traditions of Byzantine Music could be continued and from where they could be revived.

A history of the modern vihuela from Emilio Pujol's identification in 1936 of the first known vihuela in modern times through to the present. This study surveys the three phases of vihuela construction during the last nearly 80 years: the initial vihuela-guitars, the vihuela-lutes widely used since the 1970s, and recent changes in vihuela construction since the discovery and study of further instruments during the last fifteen years. The study argues that it is the nature of the instrument that is the foremost factor in determining what is today perceived as the "authentic" historical sound of the vihuela, but that the recent change in construction style by only a small number of makers is bringing modern listeners closer than ever before to the sound of the vihuela.

Libro de la edición 2016 del Festival de Música Antigua de Úbeda y Baeza. Contiene toda la programación, notas al programa, currículums de los intérpretes y actividades académicas realizadas.
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En 2016 el FeMAUB celebró su vigésimo aniversario. La conmemoración de esta efeméride sirve para articular la programación, de manera genérica, en torno al concepto de edad, entendido aquí como sinónimo de periodización o división de la historia en periodos o edades que comparten rasgos comunes entre sí. Con su característica vocación pedagógica, el XX FeMAUB ofrece una visión retrospectiva de la historia de la música con programas más o menos “puros” articulados en torno a periodos histórico-musicales concretos. Así, se transita desde la Baja Edad Media (Psallentes, José Luis Pastor) hasta el llamado Clasicismo musical (Cuarteto Iranzo) y el siglo XX (Coro Averroes), con un marcado énfasis en los distintos subperiodos del Renacimiento (Armonía Concertada, Orfeón de Granada, Las Arpas Sonorosas, Capella Prolationum & La Danserye, Salix Cantor, Contrapunctus) y los denominados Barrocos temprano (Xauen Cathedral Brass), medio (Ars Longa, Sparus Aurata) y tardío (Musicum Consensus & Coro Ciudad de Jaén, Harmonía del Parnàs), sin olvidar edades o estilos antes consideradas de transición pero que ocupan un lugar propio en nuestra visión contemporánea de la historia de la música como el galante (Los Músicos de Su Alteza, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla).
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In 2016, the FeMAUB celebrated its twentieth anniversary. The commemoration of this ephemerid served to create a program around the concept of age, understood as a synonym of periodization or division of history in periods or ages which shares common features. Following its characteristic pedagogical aim, the XX FeMAUB offers a retrospective view of music history, presenting programs devoted to particular periods of the history of music. Thus, the programs go from the late Middle Ages (Psallentes, José Luis Pastor) to the so-called musical Classicism (Cuarteto Iranzo) and to the twentieth century (Coro Averroes), with a strong emphasis on the variety of Renaissance sub-periods (Armonía Concertada, Orfeón de Granada, Las Arpas Sonorosas, Capella Prolationum & La Danserye, Salix Cantor, Contrapunctus) and the so-called early Baroque (Xauen Cathedral Brass), medium Baroque (Ars Longa, Sparus Aurata) and late Baroque (Musicum Consensus & Coro Ciudad de Jaén, Harmonía del Parnàs). Transitional styles were also taken into consideration, such as the Galant style (Los Músicos de Su Alteza, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla), as they occupy an important position in our contemporary vision of the history of music.

The anonymous treatise Regole per accompagnare sopra la parte (still preserved at the Corsiniana Library in Rome, in the Girolamo Chiti collection, and in Bologna with a di erent title) is a source of crucial importance for reconstructing the style of realization of the basso continuo in late Baroque Italy. An investigation on the place and time of origins of this treatise is an obvious preliminary step to de ne the stylistic relevance of the practices described in it.  e comparison between the copy at the Corsiniana and the one that belonged to Padre Martini’s library, and the reconstruction of the exchange of volumes between the two musicians – realized through the information included in the Chiti- Martini correspondence – demonstrates that this treatise went from Chiti’s library to that of Padre Martini.  e close relationship of this work with another, the Contrapuncti demonstratio varia, whose compilation Chiti explicitly attributes to himself, suggests that he probably did not simply copy the treatise by someone else, but that he may have collected it from various sources and documents related to common practices in the milieu in which he himself was active.  e hypothesis that the practices described in the Regole originated in Rome at Chiti’s time corroborate the fact that they can be applied to the performance practice of Corelli’s music.  is association is not only con rmed by external evidence, but also by the contents of the work; indeed, the treatise presents a great number of instances of harmonic procedures o en found in Corelli’s music.  e Regole are useful in these cases to suggest speci c solutions of realization, normally not implied in the mere examination of the  gures.

Despite most pianists' claims of historical deference and creative agency, their performances of Brahms's piano works are nothing like the early-recorded performances of the composer and his students: gaps that are mediated by understandings of Brahms's Classical canonic identity, the performance norms that protect that identity, and those norms' underlying aesthetic ideology of control. This predication of Brahmsian identity on restraint leaves the composer and his students in a precarious situation, as their recordings evidence an approach that is governed by the inhibitions typically associated with Romanticism. This volume seeks to problematize understandings of Brahms's identity: by investigating the origins and vestiges of the aesthetic ideology of control; by analysing and copying the recordings of pianists in the composer's inner circle; and by applying these pianists' styles in ways that are just as disruptive to modern notions of Brahmsian identity as their early-recorded models. In so doing, a thoroughly Romantic performance style emerges that catalyses a fundamental shift in understanding as related to Brahms's identity; thereby opening up a new palette of expressive and technical resources, and both elucidating and narrowing persistent gaps between modern and early-recorded Brahms style, as well as between what performers believe, know, and ultimately do.

Ornamentation has probably been the most discussed topic in the entire field of performance practice. It occupied an important place in theoretical writings both during the baroque period and in modern times. The majority of old sources provide elaborate tables of ornaments, extended explanations and examples. Among the most often-cited eighteenth century writers Couperin, Quantz, Leopold Mozart and C.P.E. Bach all discuss the issue extensively within the context of how to play specific instruments. The 'modern' concern for recapturing past styles, on the other hand, started with publications on ornamentation (Dannreuther, 1893-95). 1 These modern sources usually indicate the significance of ornamentation in their titles or emphasize it by the internal proportions of their writings. Apart from Dannreuther, Neumann devoted a thick volume to the topic (1978) and Aldrich (1950) and Emery (1953) wrote entire books on ornamentation specifically in Bach's music. Among the more influential 'generalist' performance practice publications Dolmetsch (1915) allocated circa 300 pages out of 470 to ornamentation; Donington discussed the topic over more than half the length of his 'Book Two' of The Interpretation of Early Music (1989); the Preface of Kirkpatrick's edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations (1938) included ten pages on 1 Although certain original treatises (eg. CPE Bach's Versuch or Leopold Mozart's Violinschule) have been regularly reprinted since their first publication, Dannreuther's book is generally considered to be the first publication which attempts to look at the issue of ornamentation in an historical context and collate information about various practices from a number of old sources.

Knowledge and debate in the field of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Venetian music has greatly benefitted in recent decades from studies of major institutions, composers, repertories and sources, as also from investigations of the quantitative aspects of musical life in what was one of the largest, richest and most commercially oriented cities on the Italian peninsula: the Venetian musical phenomenon includes, on the one hand, regular or sporadic musical activities in the city’s many churches and private palaces (activities which provided significant earnings for large numbers of musicians, whether or not salaried members of the ducal cappella) and, on the other, the auxiliary trades of music printing and instrument making. The transmission of the musical repertories has also received notable attention: in particular, the contemporary and later reception of Venetian musical repertories in different political, linguistic and/or confessional areas. Central, too, have been questions of ‘sound’, both with regard to the particular interaction between musical composition, the spatial peculiarities and the specific liturgical and ceremonial traditions of the Venetian ducal chapel, and in the context of music-making at large.

This collection of essays on the life, times and works of a composer who ranks among the most outstanding musical personalities of his day variously unites these strands in an albeit partial attempt to interpret Giovanni Gabrieli’s output and activities in their Venetian context and, at the same time, cast light on their broader historiographical significance: on the one hand Gabrieli as point of synthesis of a complex Venetian musical tradition, on the other his interaction with and impact on contemporary musical life, his influence on later generations of composers both at home and abroad, the rediscovery of his achievements by nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians and performers, the revisitations of his music by twentieth-century composers.

Reviews:
– Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 53 (2018), p. 285–291 (Michelangelo Gabbrielli)
– Early Music 46 (2018), p. 167–169 (Eleanor Selfridge-Field); reply: Early Music 46 (2018), p. 367–368
– Renaissance Quarterly 71 (2018), p. 776–777 (Tim Shephard)
– Music & Letters 100 (2019), p. 543–546 (Tim Carter)

Over the past hundred years, the operas of Claudio Monteverdi have become iconic symbols of the early music movement and have entered the canon of so-called great operas. The conventional explanation for their iconicity is that they are historically important works, the first to fully realise the potential of the operatic genre, and that they speak to us and relate to contemporary concerns. These definitions, though, are contingent on surrounding socio-cultural factors. Rather than trying to explain their immanent and autonomous greatness, this thesis examines how Monteverdi’s operas have actually been received and performed on stage, going beyond mere description and providing a deeper analysis of the political, cultural, and social contexts of their performative instances. There is no single explanation for why performers and scholars have so frequently engaged with Monteverdi’s operas, but it is clear that Monteverdi opera is now, as it was in the seventeenth century, a fluid entity. In the current stage of what Zygmunt Bauman calls ‘liquid modernity’ this fluidity and lack of single answers is particularly apparent in operatic performance. But where Bauman sees liquid life as a negative and troubling state, this thesis will show that, at least regarding early opera, not having one answer leads to great invention and thoughtful engagement with the contexts of the past and present.
The thesis consists of five case studies, each examining in detail one particular issue brought up by the early opera revival. First, an examination of Monteverdi’s place in the earliest stages of the revival in the first half of the twentieth century challenges the view of the early music movement as primarily antiquarian. The thesis demonstrates the revival’s highly politicised underpinnings in France, Germany, and Italy and the varied effect politics had on how and why Monteverdi’s operas were performed in those countries. Next, audio and video evidence is used to investigate three aspects of modern Monteverdi performance in more depth, examining how stage directors have placed notions of community on stage in their interpretations of L’Orfeo, how stage and music directors have reshaped Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria for widely varying dramaturgical and musical ends, and how singers have interpreted the role of Ottavia in L’incoronazione di Poppea vocally and dramatically. Finally, I examine three recent productions of L’incoronazione di Poppea from the perspective of a participant observer, focusing on how the opera functions in the real space of an opera house, and how the presence of performance is conveyed in early opera today through the use of directorial attitudes, space, and the staging of gender relations.
This wide-ranging thesis demonstrates that the concept of a ‘Monteverdi opera’ is fundamentally fluid. This fluidity involves not only the texts themselves (cuts, rearrangements, transpositions, orchestrations, etc.) but also their medium (the stage, film, recording), their ideologies (nationalistic, fascist, communitarian), and their performances (in various singing and playing styles). While a large amount of valuable and rigorous work has been done in studying the early music movement, few of these studies find a significant place for early opera, and few recognise the basic fluidity and cultural contingency of performance and reception. This thesis hopes to correct those omissions, and to show how this fluidity manifests itself in the modern production of Monteverdi’s operas.

A short article summarising Blankenberg's preference against using equal temperamant.  Blankenber's Elementa musica, published in 1739, shows us that there were different opinions about which temperament should be used in the first half of the 18th century, and he makes it clear that books of famous German writers like Werckmeister, Neidhardt and Mattheson, who preferred equal temperament, were read outside Germany as well.

(Une traduction française suit)

This dissertation is the first in-depth exploration of the connections between the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge (“King’s”) and the early music revival since the mid-twentieth century. It is also one of the first detailed considerations of the role of choirs in the revival. The central question I aim to answer is: How has the vocal style of King’s influenced the development of the vocal style of the early music revival in Britain? I show how the choir’s 109 albums featuring music written before 1750 have helped spread and popularize what I call the “King’s sound.” This sound is characterized by a high level of blend within choral sections, an even balancing of sections with one another, little vibrato, few changes in tempo and dynamics, and a light, bright, and breathy timbre. It is similar to a broader “English sound” found among other Oxbridge college choirs as well as British vocal ensembles specializing in early music. I argue that King’s was an important precursor to these specialist early music ensembles, as the choir began issuing many albums in the 1950s, before a large number of specialist groups formed in the 1970s and 1980s.

King’s was also compatible with and helped bolster the valuing of historical authenticity in the early music revival. Because the choir has sung frequently in church services since its foundation in the fifteenth century, listeners can see King’s as exemplifying longstanding English sacred traditions. In addition, the King’s sound itself seems more historically sensitive for early music than a singing style with hallmarks of nineteenth-century performance practice, such as heavy vibrato and frequent or large changes in tempo and dynamics.

I also argue that the close links between King’s and powerful and wealthy British institutions—particularly the University of Cambridge and the Church of England—aided in spreading the King’s sound. In addition, the all-male and mostly Caucasian composition of the choir allows listeners to see it as a remnant of Britain before twentieth-century feminist movements and modern waves of immigration. This reinforces the choir’s sense of historical authenticity as well as its appeal given the hegemonic status of whiteness and masculinity. I also suggest that the King’s sound itself reflects the relatively homogeneous identity of choir members by way of its exclusion of “other” sounds (and bodies) in favor of choral blend. To conclude, I examine how King’s has influenced the early music revival by training performers, by making premiere recordings of Renaissance and Baroque compositions, and by collaborating with instrumental ensembles. I also consider how other ensembles and trends in the revival have influenced King’s, particularly the rise of historically informed performance.



« La musique ancienne et le Chœur du King’s College, Cambridge, 1958 à 2015 »

Cette thèse est la première exploration en profondeur des liens existant entre le Chœur du King’s College, Cambridge (« King’s ») et le mouvement pour le renouveau de la musique ancienne depuis le milieu du XXe siècle. C’est également l’une des premières considérations du rôle des chœurs au sein de ce renouveau. La question centrale à laquelle je tenterai de répondre est la suivante : comment le style vocal du King’s a-t-il influencé le développement du style vocal du renouveau de la musique ancienne en Grande-Bretagne ? Je démontre comment les 109 albums du chœur sur lesquels l’on retrouve de la musique composée avant 1750 ont aidé à disséminer et populariser ce que j’appelle le « King’s sound » (le « son King’s »). Ce son se caractérise par un haut degré de fondu choral (« blend »), un équilibre uniforme des sections chorales entre elles, peu de vibrato, peu de changements de tempo et de dynamiques, ainsi qu’un timbre sonore qui est léger, brillant et aéré. Il est semblable au « English sound » (« son anglais ») que l’on retrouve parmi d’autres chœurs des collèges d’Oxbridge ainsi que des chœurs britanniques se spécialisant dans la musique ancienne. Je démontre que King’s fut un précurseur important de ces ensembles spécialisés parce que le chœur ayant commencé à produire des albums dès les années 1950, avant la formation de nombreux groupes spécialisés de musique ancienne dans les années 1970 et 1980.

King’s était également compatible avec, et contribua à fortifier, la valorisation de l’authenticité historique au sein du renouveau de la musique ancienne. Puisque le chœur a fréquemment chanté dans des services religieux depuis sa fondation au XVe siècle, les auditeurs peuvent percevoir King’s comme illustrant des traditions sacrées anglaises très anciennes. En outre, le son King’s lui-même apparaissait plus historiquement sensible pour la musique ancienne qu’un style vocal qui a des caractéristiques rappelant les pratiques d’interprétation du XIXe siècle, telles qu’un fort vibrato et des changements fréquents ou prononcés de tempi et dynamiques.

Je propose également que les liens étroits entre King’s et des institutions britanniques puissantes et riches– particulièrement l’Université de Cambridge et l’Église d’Angleterre – ont contribué à la dissémination du son King’s. De plus, la composition entièrement masculine et principalement caucasienne du chœur permet aux auditeurs de le percevoir comme un vestige de la Grande-Bretagne avant les mouvements féministes du XXe siècle et les vagues d’immigrations contemporaines. Ceci renforce le sentiment d’authenticité historique du chœur ainsi que son attrait, étant donné le statut hégémonique de la race blanche et de la masculinité. Je suggère aussi que le son King’s lui-même reflète l’identité relativement homogène des membres du chœur par son exclusion des sons alternatifs (et de différent types de personnes) en faveur d’une homogénéité chorale.

En conclusion, j’examine de quelle manière King’s a influencé le renouveau de la musique ancienne grâce à la formation d’interprètes, par l’enregistrement d’œuvres de la Renaissance et de la période baroque qui n’a jamais été enregistré auparavant, et par la collaboration avec des ensembles instrumentaux. Je m’intéresse également à la manière dont d’autres ensembles et tendances au cours de ce renouveau ont influencé King’s, particulièrement l’essor d’interprétations historiques.

(Traduction par Claudine Jacques)

This paper attcmpts to updatc some hypothesis and evidenccs about instrumental composition and performance in seventeenth-century Spain, looking at both the different written documents and the extant musical sourccs. The existcnce of parallclisms between the diffcrcnt ecclesiastic, civil ant theatrical music traditíons leads toan assimilation ofrelated genrcs, and brings out sorne important consequences on performance practice.

The vocal techniques of the past, inferred to have a higher larynx, are often dismissed as inferior in quality and volume. According to some scholarship on historical vocal techniques, there is an historical, wrong way to sing and a newer, correct way that is partly determined by the height of the larynx while singing. This thesis examines modern vocal pedagogy's understanding of laryngeal height and compares it to earlier treatises on vocal production: Maffei's discorso, Bérard's L'Art du chant, and two works by Manuel García Jr. There is remarkable similarity in the old and new pedagogy highlighting a faulty premise that the only way to sing today is with a "low" larynx, and that singers of the past sang "incorrectly" with a high larynx. The goal of this thesis is to inspire students of Historically Informed Performance Practice to study modern voice science and to discover how understanding the mechanics of vocal production clarifies the directives found in historical documents on singing.

Organ tuning and temperament are essential elements of the soundscape of an organ.
It is commonly assumed today that organ temperament practice shifted away from the well-documented standard of meantone temperament toward circulating temperaments (well-tempered or equal) around 1700. Written records and evidence from extant instruments, however, strongly suggest that unmodified meantone temperament remained common practice in North German organs until the 1740s. Even advocates of the new temperament designs such as Andreas Werckmeister had to admit that organ builders did not follow their suggestions. There is no evidence that retunings resulted in well-tempered systems; only meantone and equal temperaments are mentioned in the sources for retunings.
The reason for suggesting new temperament systems was the requirements of ensemble accompaniment. The simultaneous use of instruments tuned at different pitches (Chorton, Kammerton) required extensive transposition, a practice that, due to the development of major-minor tonality, became increasingly difficult if not impossible with organs tuned in meantone temperament. Modifications of this temperament were suggested and sometimes carried out, but were generally not successful.
Re-tempering an existing organ was a time-consuming task: in a large organ it could take months of work even for an experienced builder. The circumstances under which the organs had to be tuned constituted an important impediment to the introduction of new temperaments. An analysis of payments to bellows-treaders as recorded in church account books shows that the organs of St. Marien, Lübeck, were not retuned during the tenures of Franz Tunder and Dieterich Buxtehude. Thus, some of their organ works could not have been played on the organs available to them during their lifetimes. At this time, however, playing from a score was not acceptable for a professional organist, who was expected to extemporize even complex contrapuntal music. Organ music seems to have been written down mainly for study purposes.

Review of K. KALAITZIDIS, Post-Byzantine Music Manuscripts as a Source for Oriental Secular Music (15th to early 19th century), trans. by KYRIAKI and DIMITRI KOUBAROULIS, Würzburg 2012 (Istanbuler Texte und Studien, 28), pp. 356, € 75, ISBN 978-3-89913-947-1

The fame of Viadana's four choruses Psalms op. XXVII (1612) is
due to the particular nature of the work and his detailed foreword
which, like that of the most famous ecclesiastical hundred concerts op. XII (1602),
It is of considerable importance for the performance practice of music
sacred for both the knowledge itself of the structure and the equipment designed by the composer. The indications are contained,
in fact, well beyond a simple enumeration of the possibilities of
execution, related to the events and quota availability, and take
the precise contours of an exhibition of compositional technique and
instrumentation. In the study the practice of these Viadana's Psalms is also highlighted as a model at the German music scene and its development.

The sound execution today of the “early music”, means a series of “decision-making” by the musician, which determine specific itineraries as to adopt or reject (finally translating them sound) different possibilities come their way, the researcher and practical musician. The choice therefore, one way or another, determine the type of final interpretation, closer to documentary sources, or more free from external constraints (more “artistic”), or even multiple other types of “tradeoffs”, halfway between the positions more “historicist” and those other supposedly less scientific, because of more distant from the original sources.
This study aims to approach the problems of long and complex process of “rescue” sound of any “new” historic music (here consciously limited the scope Hispanic seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), from locating manuscripts documentary files,
transcription, study and subsequent critical edition by the musicologist, to its implementation by the musician through his public interpretation in concert.

La ejecución sonora en la actualidad de la llamada “música antigua”, supone una serie de “toma de decisiones” por parte del músico, que determinan unos itinerarios concretos, según se adopten o rechacen –para su plasmación sonora final– las diferentes posibilidades que salen al paso al investigador y al músico práctico. La elección por tanto, de uno u otro camino, determinará el tipo de interpretación final, más cercana a las fuentes documentales, o más liberada de trabas externas (más “artística”), o incluso, otros múltiples tipos de “soluciones de compromiso”, a caballo entre las posturas más “historicistas” y aquellas otras supuestamente menos científicas, por más alejadas de las fuentes originales.
El presente estudio pretende aproximarse a los problemas que plantea el largo y complejo proceso de “rescate” sonoro de toda “nueva” música histórica (aquí conscientemente acotado al ámbito hispánico de los siglos XVII y XVIII), desde la localización documental de los manuscritos en los archivos, su transcripción, estudio y posterior edición crítica por parte del musicólogo, hasta su puesta en práctica por el músico con la interpretación pública en concierto.

This exhibition celebrates harmony, both musical and visual, by bringing together instruments and archival material from the Victoria and Albert and Horniman Museums. It explores the personalities and environments that generated these great collections, and the issues surrounding their use and care.

Este artículo propone una primera reflexión sobre la labor de los maestros de capilla, en la tradición musical española, como "directores" de la ejecución musical, partiendo de la información que aportan las propias fuentes musicales españolas de los siglos XVII-XVIII, así como algunos de los principales tratados de música práctica de este contexto geográfico, temporal y cultural. El trabajo, que deberá ser continuado con mayor profundidad, evoca asuntos desde los compases y sus implicaciones en lo relativo al tempo o la manera de echar el compás hasta el régimen de ensayos. También se reflexiona sobre cómo este conocimiento histórico puede influir en nuestras actuales interpretaciones históricamente informadas de música antigua.

The application in performance of historically informed performance practice (HIPP) is the result of its dissemination, and is of value to guitarists. HIPP is based on historical sources that discuss issues arising from performance practice. two types of historical sources of HIPP are identified: primary and secondary sources. Five issues arising from performance practice are identified. These issues are: accentuation, articulation, tempo, ornamentation and embellishment, and timbre. A six-step process of HII is identified: 1. Selecting an historical work to be interpreted; 2. Gaining knowledge of the setting of the selected work; 3. Selecting and examining primary sources that address issues arising from performance practice applicable to works by the composer of the selected work; 4. Selecting and examining secondary sources that address issues arising from performance practice applicable to works by the composer of the selected work; 5. Compiling a list of guidelines from historical information contained in primary sources, and from historical information and insights contained in secondary sources; 6. Applying the compiled guidelines within the context of the creation of an historically informed interpretation (HII).
This process is applied to the interpretation of Fernando Sor’s Deuxième Grande Sonate op.25 for solo guitar.

DPhil dissertation, University of Oxford. The career of Giovanni Puzzi; horn performance practice, instruments and repertoire; London concert life (Philharmonic Society, the King's/Her Majesty's Theatre, Concert of Antient  Music, benefit and private concert); patronage; impresario work; the music business in London.

This article reflects upon the importance of composing in the "historische Satzlehre" class at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Richard Sennett's thoughts on craftsmanship offer a key to the understanding of historical composition practices and the textbooks in which they are imparted. This is demonstrated using examples from High Baroque, insights into the teaching practice are offered and, on the basis of examples, it is shown in detail how certain compositional problems are dealt with. Experience in the craft of composing should allow the students a lively approach to the music that they perform and make possible a sovereign handling of musical texts.

Der Artikel reflektiert die Bedeutung des Komponierens im Fach "Historische Satzlehre" an der Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Richards Sennetts Überlegungen zum Handwerk liefern einen Schlüssel zum Verständnis historischer Kompositionspraktiken und Lehrbücher, in denen diese vermittelt werden. Dies wird anhand von Beispielen aus dem Hochbarock demonstriert. Anschließend werden Einblicke in die Unterrichtspraxis gegeben und exemplarisch gezeigt, wie bestimmte satztechnische Problemstellungen im Detail behandelt werden. Eigene Erfahrung im Handwerk des Komponierens sollen den Studierenden  einen lebendigen Zugang zu der von ihnen gespielten Musik ermöglichen und ihnen einen souveränen Umgang mit Notentexten ermöglichen.

The success of the early music movement raises questions about performing historical works: Should musicians perform on period instruments and try to reconstruct the original style? If a historically "authentic" performance is impossible or undesirable , what should be the goal of the early music movement? I turn to Gadamer to answer these questions by constructing the outlines of a hermeneutics of early music performance. In the first half of the paper, I examine Gadamer's critique of historical reconstruction and argue that this critique sheds light on mistaken tendencies and misunderstandings within the early music movement, but it does not discredit the movement as such. In the second half of the paper, I attempt to show how Gadamer's dialogical account of historical consciousness provides a framework for understanding what historically informed performance is seeking to accomplish, as well as its advantage over a Nietzschean approach.

This article stresses again some elements of historical musical practice, and constitutes a review and a new reflection on the materials related to the conditions and conventions of the execution of vocal music in the 17th century in Spain, some of them already published. Resumen Este artículo incide de nuevo en algunos elementos de la práctica musical histórica, y constituye una revisión y nueva reflexión sobre materiales, algunos de ellos ya publicados, relativos a las condiciones y convenciones de la ejecución de música vocal en la España del siglo XVII.

This paper investigates the influence of alla turca style in music by W.A. Mozart and F. J. Haydn in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It begins by tracing the origin of the style back to the Ottoman janissaries and their formation in 1329, discussing the first encounters between Europeans and janissaries, and following that influence into European classical music hundreds of years later. The paper will look at various musical examples, specifically examining orchestration, instrumentation and texture.The result is educational, striking impacts and surprising moments in some of the best-loved works in western classical music.

Ponencia en el Simposio "La gestión del patrimonio musical" (Madrid, INAEM, 2014), que propone una reflexión sobre algunos de los aspectos que condicionan nuestra
visión del patrimonio musical histórico y la problemática que surge a la hora de llevar a la práctica su
recuperación, con algunas referencias a la historia de la interpretación históricamente informada

Anhand von Schumanns Lied "Ich grolle nicht" wird hier der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern Musikforschung und musikalische Praxis in einem Wechselverhältnis stehen. Insbesondere geht es anhand von Interpretationsanalysen um die Frage, inwiefern die musikalische Praxis die Musikforschung beeinflusst.

Entertaining Possession: Re-enacting Cook's Arrival for the Queen
This paper is concerned with a re-enactment of the landing of Captain Cook in Australia in 1970, the bicentennial of the event. Amid many nationally organised events to remember Cook's passage up the east coast of Australia and a wide variety of Indigenous and non-Indigenous protests, this re-enactment of his landing at Botany Bay, Sydney was performed for the visiting Queen Elizabeth and her entourage, a huge live audience and an even bigger television one. As a performance of ‘lawful’ possession, of practicing the forgetting of Indigenous sovereignty and original opposition, this piece of public relations was meant to unite both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Instead, this conciliation to British rule and non-Indigenous control became a complex set of acts and material accessories that connected the spectacle on the beach with local acts of protest, performers own histories of intrusion and accounts of the re-enactment that unwittingly revealed the paucity of its own claim to a single historical truth. These tensions between a managed historical act and the labile possibilities of live performances revealed the powerful ways in which performances of national histories are also plays within power.

Director del taller “Taller vocal de interpretación de música barroca: las Vísperas de Monteverdi desde las fuentes originales”, (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, campus “Antonio Mahado” de Baeza, del 3 al 5 de diciembre de 2018), junto con Fernando Pérez Valera (Universidad de Alicante).
El presente taller, de carácter teórico-práctico, se centrará en el estudio y montaje, desde una perspectiva históricamente informada, de una de las obras más emblemáticas de la historia de la música universal: las Vísperas de la Virgen (1610) de Claudio Monteverdi. Se trata de un taller experimental en el que se recreará el método de trabajo de una capilla vocal de principios del siglo XVII, leyendo las Vísperas a partir de la notación original contenida en los libretes impresos de 1610. Por otro lado, la sección de canto llano que complementa el oficio de Vísperas (antífonas a los salmos) también se estudiará y se trabajará sobre fuentes contemporáneas italianas o españolas. Ello implica, en primer lugar, experimentar el solfeo histórico (solmisación), entre otros aspectos de la práctica interpretativa histórica, atendiendo a los tratados de teoría musical de ese periodo, además de a las propias fuentes musicales originales. Entre otros, se prestará especial atención a los siguientes temas:
1. Aspectos generales de interpretación a partir de fuentes originales:
- Solmisación. El hexacordo y las mutaciones. La mano guidoniana y el gamut.
- Notación mensural: figuras y pausas. El tactus. Figuras con punto y síncopas; figuras ligadas. El color. Proporción tripla y sesquialtera
- Contrapunto, texturas, cánones y cláusulas.
- Música ficta: ajuste intervalos perfectos armónicos y melódicos; fórmulas cadenciales.
- Conceptos de ornamentación y su puesta en práctica, tanto en el canto llano como en la polifonía, de acuerdo con los criterios estéticos del momento y a partir de las referencias que se encuentran en tratados de la época.

2. Aspectos performativos de las Vísperas de Monteverdi:
- Reconstrucción de las antífonas de canto llano que acompañan a los salmos
- Estructura general de la parte polifónica: obras basadas en cantus firmus y obras libremente compuestas. 
- Estilos de canto: obras para solistas y a varios coros.
- Cuestiones de ornamentación e improvisación. 
- Otras dimensiones interpretativas: pronunciación, tempo, transportes y afinación.

Puesto que el taller es principalmente práctico, se dirige fundamentalmente a músicos (cantantes, directores de coro, musicólogos especializados en música antigua) interesados en acercarse a este repertorio desde una nueva perspectiva.

The perception of baroque music has until recently been somewhat neglected in music research. However, the existence of recordings documenting various styles of performing baroque music offers researchers the opportunity to investigate the efficacy of musicological claims about historically informed per‐ formance (HIP) practice from the perspective of the modern listener. The paper examines the existence of the perceptual variable of Baroque Expressiveness (BE), and its relationships to other aesthetic variables. Responses were collected from 31 musically trained participants to recordings of the D minor Sarabanda for Solo Violin by J. S. Bach made by Menuhin (1934), Grumiaux (1961) and Luca (1976), and to a filtered version of the Luca that sounded as if it was made in the 1930s. A variety of performance and aesthetic parameters were rated. Results indicated that recording quality did not influence judgements of BE. Participants were able to distinguish BE or lack thereof across the three recordings in the pre‐ dicted way. Success of Performance and Stylishness were highly correlated with BE and in a regression analysis were each best predicted by perceived rhythmic flexibility. However, subtle distinctions could also be identified in the perceived performance features used across these aesthetic variables. Furthermore, partial correlations showed a stronger relationship between Success and Stylishness than BE and Stylishness. This indicates that different types of expressivenesses exist and BE is not the sole arbiter of success. Our study provides an example of the possibility of experimental examination of musicological discourse.

History and analysis of F-Pn Rés. Vmc 78, a cantata ms. bought by Charles Burney in Rome and the basis for his chapter on the Italian cantata in his General History of Music. Traces the fortunes of its contents to the 1923 "concert" arrangements for voice and piano by Pietro Floridia.

Recently, there is a growing interest in studies on the relationship between music and movement. This has given
rise to many paradigms and theories, including embodied approaches that provide interesting methodologies in
studies on music and dance. Insight into the relation between dance and music is particularly important for the
Baroque period, as a direct connection between music and dance was omnipresent, even if music was not used
to dance to. Many types of Baroque dances existed, each of them with particular dance steps and a specific
character, requiring a specific tempo. However, in music performance practice today, the link with the original
dance movement is often lost and the tempo variation can be very large, both between different performances of
the same dance and within one performance. The aim of this study is to compare the interpretations of dancers
and musicians regarding Baroque music and dance in an experimental setting. The study consists of two parts.
First, we investigate the influence of dance movement on the musical interpretation of a series of Baroque
dances. The pieces were recorded both with and without dance accompaniment and the tempo and timing in the
different versions were compared. In the second part, dancers performed a particular choreography on music that
varied in tempo. Video analysis and questionnaire data were used to evaluate the different performances. The
results were compared with the tempi of music recordings of the same dance types, showing a clear difference
between music and dance performance. In general, this study shows that musicians adapt their interpretation
when performing together with the dancers and that the optimal tempo range found for certain Baroque dances
coincides only partly with the tempi commonly found in music recordings. The direct link between music and
movement and its mutual influence illustrates the importance of an embodied approach in music performance,
where in this case dance movement gives concrete information for a ‘historically informed’ performance.