Introduction: voicing text 1500-1700

This special issue grew out of a conference held in 2015 at Newcastle University in partnership with the Royal College of Music, London. It marked the end of a Research Network, "Voices and Books 1500-1800," a two-year project exploring the relationship between voice and text, generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK

‘Inclosed in this tabernacle of flesh’: body, soul, and the singing voice

This essay considers how early modern constructions of the singing voice are embedded into a range of philosophical discourses that spread far wider than the usual concerns of music scholarship. Taking as a case study, Battista Guarini's poem 'Mentre vaga Angioletta' (1581), it investigates of some of the broader concepts, both philosophical and ‘scientific’, which lie behind the poem’s engagement with the operation of a particular singing voice, and its effects on the body of the one who listens. It provides a model for fresh ways of considering a fundamental human phenomenon, that is important to comprehending early modern consciousness

Singing Handel, then and now

If you attend a performance of a Handel opera or oratorio these days, the chances are it may still be billed, perhaps rather self-consciously, as being ‘historically-informed’ – though increasingly it is no longer considered necessary to draw attention to such exceptionality, because this has become the norm. Our ears (and eyes) are now fully acclimatised to the light and agile playing of gut-strung instruments with short, light bows; the pungent, stringy sounds of baroque oboes and bassoons; the almost reedy, piercing quality of narrow-bore, valveless trumpets and horns; and the dry crack of shallow, calf-skin headed timpani beaten with hardwood sticks

Historically informed singing: fantasy, reality - or an irrelevance?

The phrase ‘historically-informed’ is a badge (usually self-awarded) worn by many musicians who perform ‘early music’ these days. But just what does it really mean, both in a certain world of musicking that embraces practitioners and their audiences, and in more scholarly historiographical terms? When it comes to singers and singing, for all that the airwaves and download sites are brimming with the sounds of confident performances of a massive range of music of the past, almost unimaginable fifty years ago, there remains a continuous uneasy stand-off between what we think we know and what we think we are actually doing. Indeed, rather than coming to terms with what a commitment to being ‘historically informed’ might actually lead to, singing itself is (and is in danger of remaining) the elephant in the room

Colonialism, capitalism, and the invention of Early Music

‘Nowhere is the connection between theoretical musicology and musical performance as close as in the field of historical performance practice’, states the author of the article ‘Musikwissenschaft’ in MGG. This paper argues that the mutual appropriation of one by the other in order first to construct a symbiotic relationship, and then to hold onto a hegemonic position as joint arbiters of what is, by any definition, a wholly artificial construction – the field called ‘Early Music’ – has been one of the more remarkable successes of the maintenance of canonicity in both the repertoire of Western music and the way it is performed. In this essay I share a few preliminary thoughts about how early music’s apparent success has been achieved and sustained, by considering some of its strategies and structures against the bigger historical and political forces that have characterised the times and societies in which the phenomenon became what it is now, specifically colonialism and 'late' capitalism. This is primarily an exercise in comparative, rather than causal history, but I also want to emphasise that ‘early music’, like all cultural production, cannot insulate itself from being deeply embroiled in the ideological spaces in which it operates

The materiality of Early Modern ensemble music making

At one point in the iconic ‘Artusi-Monteverdi Controversy’ – a ‘dialogue of the deaf’ between music theorist and composer conducted in print around 1600 – Artusi argues that however well performers of a madrigal might nuance ‘illegal’ dissonances “with the greatest discretion and judgement”, they “always are and always will be grating, crude, harsh and insupportable to the ear. And when this song is taken from the hands of these singers, it will inevitably still be insupportable and will remain thus.” Artusi’s throwaway remark about the song being ‘taken from the hands’ of the singers once their performance is finished is an arresting image of a literal separation between the notated ‘material’ and its anonymous executors, who, as it were, leave the part books behind on the table and exit the room. Evoking Roger Chartier’s dictum that “Reading is not uniquely an abstract operation of the intellect: it brings the body into play, it is inscribed in a space and a relationship with oneself and with others” we might extrapolate this and say that performances of notated ensemble music are, in fact, collective ‘readings aloud’ of a particularly spectacular and physiologically dynamic variety, involving what the New Materialist, Jane Bennett, describes as “assemblages … ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts”, that include both human bodies, inanimate objects and the actions and forces that connect them. This paper will present a range of evidence of early modern collective music-making, focussed on reconstituting both the physical, and the relational materialities that they bring into play

Performing social relationships: the materialism of collective music-making

The great music sociologist, Christoper Small, coined the now ubiquitous neologism ‘musicking’ to describe ‘taking part, in any capacity, in a musical performance’, going on to propose that ‘The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies.’ (It is not hard to imagine extrapolating this to other arenas of performance – theatrical or ceremonial, for example). But what if those acts happened hundreds of years ago, and are only discernible today in the form of opaque images, fragmentary literary descriptions, or the occasional displaced domestic object? This paper takes examples of representations of informal collective music-making drawn from relatively marginal genres of evidence such as novels, friendship albums, emblem catalogues, frontispieces, and household objects. Taking up Christopher Small’s dictum always to begin by asking ‘What’s really going on here?' I attempt to read them both as records of musical practices (and thus what they might tell us about the materiality of early modern musicking) and also as metaphors that may refer to the deeper social meanings of the relationships they celebrate

‘Il vero modo di cantar’: the international transmission of the sound of Italian singing in early modern Europe

It has acquired the status of a myth: how Italy, land of song, in a process beginning sometime in the sixteenth century, harnessed its native people’s apparently inborn and irresistibly alluring singing style and so successfully exported it that by the mid-seventeenth century, it had achieved a European hegemony of art singing that would, before long, become world-wide. Behind the myth lies, naturally, plenty of fact: a rich historiography traces the colonisation by Italian musicians of vast swathes of European music culture, primarily through the dissemination of compositional genres, and migrations both out of and into Italy of singers, composers, teachers and consumers of music. Italian singing ultimately became the key driver of an intricate network of dynamic structures of music consumption across Northern Europe, feeding many dependent economies either directly, or indirect spill-overs from it. But attempts to account for this complex cultural history have, until recently, largely ignored what lies at its heart: the embodied acoustics of singing itself, and the commercialisation and international transmission of ‘Italian vocality’ through a complex interaction of emulation, local adaptation, professional instruction and self-teaching, supported more by specialised printed method books. This paper explores the process by which a highly elite style of vocalising first fostered in the secretive world of Italian courtly comportment, made its way into the cultural mainstream of European society, thanks both to the economic and social drivers of an emerging capitalist Europe, and the universality of the human voice with its capacity for being tamed and trained

Conservatoires in society: institutional challenges and possibilities for change

Educational sociologists and philosophers have long recognised that educational institutions play a significant role in shaping as well as supporting societal norms. In the face of growing global social, political, and environmental challenges, should conservatoires be more overt in expressing a mission to sustain and improve the societies in which they are located? In times of ever-increasing scepticism emanating from governments and the broader populace alike about the efficacy of public spending, if not the public sphere itself, this essay suggests it is both timely and necessary for conservatoires to reconsider, reinvigorate and re-articulate their capacity to contribute to broader social goods. Drawing on the authors’ professional experience as well as current literature and debates, the essay is both deliberately provocative and open-ended, articulating a number of points of departure that institutions might consider in addressing the challenge of maintaining and exercising their relevance to broader society

Performance practice scholarship

Description of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music: Recent decades have seen a major increase of interest in historical performance practice, but until now there has been no comprehensive reference tool available on the subject. This fully up-to-date, illuminating and accessible volume will assist readers in rediscovering and recreating as closely as possible how musical works may originally have sounded. Focusing on performance, this Encyclopedia contains entries in categories including issues of style, techniques and practices, the history and development of musical instruments, and the work of performers, scholars, theorists, composers and editors. It features contributions from more than 100 leading experts who provide a geographically varied survey of both theory and practice, as well as evaluation of and opinions on the resolution of problems in period performance. This timely and ground breaking book will be an essential resource for students, scholars, teachers, performers and audiences