The days of believing that 18th-century musical texts should be taken literally in performance are long over. Instead, there is widespread agreement that they should be understood as musical serving suggestions, including in choices of instrumentation. For example, in 1906 musicologist Edward Dent proposed that some of Domenico Scarlatti’s (1685–1757) sonatas were not written for a single keyboard instrument, but were in fact intended for the violin and keyboard. Dent was talking about sonatas k.73 (l.217), 77 (168), 78 (75), 81 (271), 89 (211), 90 (106) and 91 (176), all of which are transmitted in ‘Libro XIV’ of a Venetian manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, dated 1742. However, it was to take almost 40 years before Lionel Salter, Dent’s student, published them for this instrumentation—see his collection of Sonatas for violin and clavier (7 vols., London, 1940–50). Further examination of the Scarlatti source materials revealed that another 16 sonatas had similar characteristics to the seven identified by Dent. These characteristics include a four-movement structure (slow–fast–slow–fast), often with a figured bass, with the ‘right-hand’ and ‘left-hand’ voices separated throughout; the right hand contains wide chords that are unplayable with one hand, but can be performed on the violin; and dots and slurs in the upper part suggest articulation with a bowed string instrument. Due to the numerous violinistic passages, it is widely agreed today that several of the sonatas from the manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana were indeed designed to be performed by more than one instrument. There is no consensus on how many works meet these criteria, though, and this is reflected in their recording history. In 2008, for instance, Tedi Papavrami recorded his transcriptions of 12 keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti for solo violin (Aeon, aecd0644, issued 2008); in 2012, violinist Paolo Perrone, harpsichordist Alexandra Nigito and members of Capella Tiberina performed movements from Dent’s pick of continuo sonatas, experimenting with various scorings (Brilliant Classics, 94325, issued 2013); and in 2022, another reading of sonatas k.81 and 88–91 was published, this time on YouTube, with Debra Fast (violin) and Sandro Ivo Bartoli (organ) (see https://tinyurl.com/3w3uyvcc).

While scholarship on Georg Philipp Telemann has steadily gained momentum in Germany since the ‘Telemann renaissance’ of the early 1900s, Anglophone research into this most prolific of composers has, until recently, remained the purview of a small handful of scholars. Still, I was surprised to read, in the preface of Telemann studies, that the first English-language conference dedicated to the life and music of Telemann did not take place until the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. And it was at this conference, entitled ‘Georg Philipp Telemann: Enlightenment and Postmodern Perspectives’ (hosted by Temple University, Philadelphia in 2017) that the present volume began life. Fittingly, given its important status as the first English-language essay collection on Telemann, Telemann studies goes well beyond what might be expected from a book of conference proceedings (valuable as these can be) in terms of overall polish and coherence. Its 16 chapters (contributed not only by Telemann specialists, but also by leading scholars best known for research into C. P. E. and J. S. Bach) have been grouped by editors Wolfgang Hirschmann and Steven Zohn into five parts: ‘Enlightenment Perspectives’, ‘Urban and Courtly Contexts’, ‘Nature (and) Theology in the Late Vocal Works’, ‘Bach Family Connections’ and ‘Cantata Cycles in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Beyond’.

Abstract The figure of the courtesan features in many literary and artistic productions of the Italian Cinquecento. The term ‘musical courtesan’ has been widely used to describe several portraits produced in the first half of the 16th century representing beautiful young women (belle) in different attires playing the lute. This article problematizes the notion of the ‘musical courtesan’ and argues instead that these depictions of belle should be understood in terms of the varied interpretations that might be reached by 16th-century viewers. Such portraits could convey higher ideals such as the institution of marriage of the contemplation of beauty. Case-studies are offered of portraits by Andrea Solario (1460–1524), Bartolomeo Veneto (1502–55), Parrasio Micheli (c.1516–78) and Palma Vecchio (c.1480–1528) that show beautiful, young female lutenists in different attires.

It was Stanley Sadie who proposed, in a chapter in The eighteenth century (The Blackwell History of Music, ed. H. Diack Johnstone, 1991), that the study of subscription lists in music publications of the period should be of interest and importance. Although Michael Talbot, Michael Kassler, David Hunter and others have followed Sadie’s advice in specialized areas, this new book is the first larger-scale one to survey the whole field. In addition, this work is able to take advantage of the digital world through a database of subscribers that has been compiled and which acts as a companion to the book. The preface by the two editors clearly lays out the aim of the book and explains how the Dataset of subscribers to eighteenth-century music publications in Britain and Ireland came to be. This is followed by a series of articles on specific topics which are divided into two categories: how music by subscription was produced and who the subscribers themselves were. Publishing by subscription was a good way for an author to keep down the initial costs of printing. Invitations were sent out to potential subscribers asking for a financial contribution with the promise that they would see their name listed at the front of the book. The results could reap rich rewards: Alexander Pope got £5,000 in subscription money for his translations of Homer, a sum worth over £350,000 today.

Abstract After St Cecilia’s reportedly incorrupt body was excavated in Rome in 1599, Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrato commissioned a series of artworks in her honour. The last of these, Guido Reni’s St Cecilia playing the violin (1606), shows her gazing upwards, violin in hand, in a state of musical ecstasy. Highlighting the importance of this painting, which thus far has received little attention from musicologists, this article seeks to unpack the ambiguities inherent in Reni’s portrayal of the virgin martyr as a violinist. Taking the complex tradition linking Cecilia with music as a point of departure, the article examines the portrait in the context of contemporary attitudes to spiritual listening and women’s performance. This brings into focus the network of ideas about music-induced transcendence that would have informed visual readings of the painting; conversely, it also shows that the virginal saint was not immune to sensualizing interpretations. Finally, the study explores the ways in which the portrait references the saint’s miraculous body, suggesting that Reni sought to emphasize Cecilia’s sacred chastity and to gesture towards a numinous music unknowable by the senses.

Abstract Christmas, as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, is a central and joyful feast of Christian worship. In medieval and early modern Europe, this translated into a rich musical tradition, of which Christmas songs were a significant part. Song collections from the Devotio moderna, a spiritual movement that spread in the Low Countries and Germany during the 15th and 16th centuries, are an important witness to this Christmas tradition. However, because of their wide dissemination and their simple musical style, these songs have presented an historiographical challenge: it has proved impossible to detail in full the ubiquitous circulation of the well-known songs adopted within the Devotio moderna, as well as to subject their music and texts to close analysis of the kind usually undertaken for more ‘complex’ polyphony. In this context, the Benedicamus Domino offers a new and productive perspective: not only was the Benedicamus Domino singled out for special permission to be sung in polyphony at Christmas, but many Christmas songs are in fact Benedicamus tropes. I trace the uses and functional implications of the Benedicamus Domino within a single and very widely transmitted song, Puer nobis nascitur. Based on an analysis of its polyphonic versions in Latin and of its transmissions with a mix of Latin and vernacular texts, I argue that the Benedicamus was one element deliberately used in Christmas songs to guide spiritual exercises and meditation, inspiring and expressing joy during the Christmas season.

I am writing in response to Marten Noorduin’s article ‘The metronome marks for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in context’, Early Music, xlix (2021), pp.129–45. Regarding the Trio of the second movement, Noorduin gives arguments in favour of the minim = 116 found in some early sources, as well as of the alternative interpretations minim = 160 (according to Noorduin, the likely tempo at the first Viennese performance) and semibreve = 116 (in accordance with the Prestissimo pencil marking on the autograph) and leaves it to the performer which option to choose. Since I was dealing with this issue already three decades ago (‘Zur (doch nicht richtigen!) Metronomangabe des Presto im 2. Satz von Beethovens IX. Sinfonie’, Das Orchester (1991), pp.406–7), I should like to add two examples that give more evidence for semibreve = 116. The fourth movement of the String Quartet op.18 no.5 (Allegro) has minim = 76, thus semibreve = 152. While the passage from bar 44 onwards shows an almost identical structure with the Presto Trio under discussion (slurred crotchets in scales), there are also many places with quavers, which are very scarce in the Presto. Since it is just an Allegro, the almost identical solution of minim = 160 for the Presto would be still too slow, let alone the even slower tempo of minim = 116.

Abstract This article examines the depiction of sexual propo­sition, the corruption of female virtue and the ambivalent allurements of secular music in a pair of 16th-century Concert paintings by the Venetian artist Bernardino Licinio. It argues that Licinio’s multi-figure concerts, centred on the music-making of young women, both parody and invert the classical elegiac theme of the pauper amans, the impoverished poet-lover who condemns the power of wealth and bestows poetry instead of gold on his beloved, only to be rejected due to her vanity and materialism. The pauper amans theme appears in several 16th-century Venetian strambotti and early madrigals, which are decidedly satiric in tone. In his paintings, Licinio reverses the familiar roles of poet and beloved, and the refined music of the virtuous-seeming young woman is challenged by the dissonant sound of her older male admirer shaking a purse full of coins or by his bold physical advances, which impede her playing. The dissonant and crude gesture of offering her coin payment equates the young woman’s art of music with her sexuality. It alleges not only her corruptibility and low status as a piece of merchandise for sale, but also debases the spiritually elevating art of music, with its noble and abstract figurations of love. The motif of the shaken purse with its ‘music of gold’ first appears in the Venetian dialect comedy La buelsca (c.1514), and is repeated in a series of later songs and poems centred on the subject of the grasping, mercenary prostitute in the 1520s and 30s. Licinio’s paintings play with such popular literary and musical themes but ultimately prefer visual ambiguity and unresolved narrative tension to their frankness and specificity.