Lute

Abstract: Although reconstructing the history of intonation for keyboard and fretted instruments (such as the lute, or viola da gamba) has proved a sufficiently vexing problem for musicologists, it is easy to see that when one deals with instruments whose intonation is variable-as in the case of unfretted bowed strings-the problems are multiplied. Most ancient theorists avoided the subject, or confined themselves to reporting uncritically on the traditional divisions of the monochord, without attempting to ascertain whether or not those divisions were respected in practice. In this article I shall therefore depend mainly upon unpublished sources of practical or experimental origin, including some that concern singing. Indeed, these are the only documents that provide a secure point of reference in so foggy an area. They show that violinists of all schools, at least until the middle of the 18th century, played in just or in mean-tone intonation; moreover, the Italians, especially during Corelli's time, enjoyed playing in quarter-tones.

Abstract: Abstract John Jenkins (1592-1678) was acknowledged by his English contemporaries as a supreme composer of instrumental music. A conference held in 1992 to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth, rather than focusing only on his life and work, set these in a wider context. Some of the papers included here were first presented at the conference, but are supplemented by others giving a broad conspectus of current work by leading scholars in the field of English consort music. The collection embraces various aspects not only of Jenkin's work, but also some of his contemporaries (Gibbons, Ferrabosco II, Mico, Cobbold), instruments (lute, lyre, viol, organ), and consort manuscripts, including their patrons and copyists.

Abstract: This study provides a critical analysis of the modern renaissance and popularization of the recorder in England, examining the phenomena and placing them within their broader musical and cultural contexts. It explores the roles of the principal protagonists and institutions, arguing that a confluence of different agendas—musical, educational and social—within an environment of changing conditions, was crucial to the successful revival of an instrument, which in Victorian England had no living tradition at all. There was a clear relationship between the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century scholarship on the recorder and the desire to learn more about England’s ‘golden age’ of music during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even before the 1870s, scholars represented the recorder as an obsolete instrument. By the 1890s and particularly from 1900, there were a few people playing the instrument in public, most notably Canon Galpin and Arnold Dolmetsch. Unquestionably, Dolmetsch’s work with the recorder between 1900 and the late 1920s was crucial to the subsequent mass revival. Changes in educational ideas and doctrine between the World Wars led to children’s music classes including active instrumental music making, in part to stimulate a sense of cultural identity. From 1926 the bamboo pipe gradually became the melodic instrument most commonly used in English schools, until Edgar Hunt, inspired by Arnold Dolmetsch’s Haslemere concerts, conceived of a popular recorder revival. Hunt began to import inexpensive German recorders, and to research and publish pre-Classical recorder music. From 1935 the recorder began to usurp the place of the bamboo pipe in English elementary schools. Concurrently, musical and educational authorities were encouraging domestic music making, for social and musically nationalistic reasons, often linking it with Elizabethan music making. The idea that a strong musical knowledge across all demographics could enable the nation to become ‘a land with music’ once more was invoked in many of the activities undertaken between the Wars. The work of The Society of Recorder Players, established in 1937, was significant and had long-term consequences for the success of the popular revival, as well as for the relative status of the recorder. At the same time, classes established by Edgar Hunt at Trinity College of Music as well as new compositions for the recorder helped to legitimize the instrument. This thesis addresses a number of gaps in previous research, by exploring thoroughly the history of the recorder in England between 1879 and 1941, utilizing extensive primary source materials—many hitherto overlooked—; by examining linkages between the recorder’s increasing usage and the various strands of the English musical renaissance; and by determining why the recorder was so highly popular when other instruments—notably the bamboo pipe—appeared to have similar attributes.