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A detailed discussion of the instruments portrayed by Hans Memling in the late 15th century, based on the three great panels in Antwerp, comparing and contrasting the instruments shown there with all the others painted by the artist, some of which are also illustrated here. Full references to all his known paintings showing musical instruments are given as an appendix , listed under their present locations.
Hugh Howard's portrait of Corelli is described by John Smith in his mezzotint copy as 'ad vivum pinxit' ('painted from the life'). This promise of a quasi-photographic, documentary accuracy needs to be treated with some scepticism, however. Howard, under the tutelage of the distinguished portrait painter Carlo Maratti, spent much of his three years in Italy copying other paintings (including Maratti's own self-portrait). It seems unlikely, in any case, that (even in view of the patronage of Lord Edgcumbe) Corelli would have been willing to sit for this relatively obscure semi-professional painter. Howard completed three versions of the Corelli portrait and the musical detail in two of these suggests that their real interest lies not in providing a reliable guide to Corelli's appearance but in what Barthes called 'la rhétorique de l'image'. (The widespread use of engraved copies of these portraits as frontispieces to Corelli editions underlines their role in constructing a persona of a serious and learned musician.) This is most obvious through the allusions in the painted border of one of the portraits to Corelli's op.3 no.7 and op.5, no.6—both contrapuntal movements.
Jacques Champion de Chambonnières's two books of Pièces de clavessin (1670) represent the beginnings of the printed tradition of the French harpsichord school; they were produced using the technique of engraving, still quite new to French music. Like the sonic manifestations of Chambonnières's music, the engravings reflect a high degree of freedom and individuality; in contrast to the aesthetics of ensemble music, which required conformity to the group, the solo harpsichord repertory allowed for greater freedom of expression, especially through the use of improvised agréments and rhythmic flexibility. Walter Ong's theory of orality and literacy informs a critical assessment of the role of Chambonnières's books in the establishment of the composer's authority over his texts. Consideration of other images produced by the Jollain atelier calls attention to the physicality of the images, and their importance as realizations of the music they represent.
The 350th anniversary of the birth of Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657–1726) is a stimulus for a reassessment of the grands motets of the most influential composer for the chapel of Louis XIV and Louis XV after the court moved to Versailles in 1682. Lalande's interest in Italian music, notably that of Corelli, and his passion for continuous revision, are noted in the context of other, Parisian centres of interest in Italian style. Extracts from Lalande's late motets illustrate how ultramontane infl uences allied to formal, harmonic and contrapuntal skills of a high order produced works which were to dominate the repertory both of the chapel and the Paris Concert spirituel for some 50 years after the composer's death.
The keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti were a staple of the repertory in the early 20th-century revival of the harpsichord. Early modern harpsichordists such as Wanda Landowska played instruments, most notoriously those of the Pleyel firm, constructed in the manner of modern pianos and provided with elaborate registrational resources which were controlled by pedals, lacking in most harpsichords of Scarlatti's time. The first conscientious investigation of the keyboard instruments actually available to Scarlatti was undertaken in the 1950s by Ralph Kirkpatrick, who concluded that Scarlatti'composed for a sonorous harpsichord . . . with one keyboard and two stops at 8 pitch', controlled by hand-stops. This view, that the appropriate instrument for Scarlatti was something like a common Italian harpsichord with the compass extended to five octaves or more, predominated into the 1990s. During the same period, the'plucked pianos'of Pleyel and other manufacturers were eclipsed by harpsichords made in the historical manner. More recently, Scarlatti has been increasingly regarded as'the piano's first great advocate', and recordings have been made on pianos of the Florentine type made by Bartolomeo Cristofori, which Scarlatti would have known and which his patrons imported to Portugal and Spain. Also, the ownership by Scarlatti's patroness, Queen Maria Barbara of Spain, of a harpsichord with numerous stops controlled by pedals has been taken as evidence for the use of such instruments in historically informed performance of Scarlatti's works. The circumstances suggest, however, that Scarlatti had nothing to do with the conception of this harpsichord. Upon her death in 1758, the queen also owned five'normal'harpsichords with two 8 stops. In addition to inventing the piano, Cristofori, continuing on a path begun by 17th-century Roman makers, rejuvenated Italian harpsichord making. Because Scarlatti apparently promoted not only the pianos of Cristofori and his Florentine pupils but also their harpsichords, both types became known in Portugal and Spain. With the discovery of many more instruments in the last few years, much has been learned about Spanish and Portuguese harpsichord making, which should be regarded as a coherent Iberian school, albeit with regional variations. Fundamentally, this school was a branch of the northern European tradition, and the earliest-known Spanish harpsichord, by Joseph Bueno, Valladolid, 1712, resembles a standard Ruckers single-manual instrument, with one 8 stop and one 4 . Later, Iberian makers, presumably including Scarlatti's associate at the Spanish royal court, Diego Fernández, made instruments influenced by Florentine models with long, square-tailed cases, scaling for brass strings with Pythagorean progression deep into the bass, and the standard Italian disposition with just two 8 stops. Retaining many details of their own traditional style, the Iberian makers did not imitate the particulars of Cristofori's innovative case construction, and they made more refined actions. These changes to the Florentine style might have been done at Scarlatti's suggestion or with his approval. Because of accidents of survival and the need to replace instruments destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, this new style is most apparent in Portuguese harpsichords. Connections between Scarlatti and Portugal were maintained until the end of his life. The late Portuguese harpsichords with the two-8 disposition and large compass of GG to g are very well suited for the performance of Scarlatti's works and might well represent his own preferred medium.
Domenico Scarlatti's Essercizi have usually been regarded as the product of a haphazard assembly process, even though this is not what one would expect in a published collection. This article shows by way of introduction that the decision of most earlier writers to reject as coincidental the two obvious groups was not justified. It then shows that there are other, more complex groupings, previously undetected, which would appear from probability calculations to be deliberate. There follows a short discussion of the possible motivation for the groups, and how they might relate to the pairs familiar from later sources. The second part deals with the'tremulo di sopra'(k96), attempting to show that it is no different from the ordinary tremulo, and therefore uses the lower auxiliary.
It seems that some arias by Alessandro Scarlatti and Han-del have passages that need to be played with rhythmic inequality. A typical case would be a slow tempo aria in C time where semiquaver dotting is already prevalent: questions arise when a motif written first in dotted semiquavers appears elsewhere without dotting. A common practice with both composers is to write all their instrumental parts with continuous dotting, while leaving their vocal parts undotted. This happens so frequently that unequal performance of voice parts in such cases becomes a serious option.
This study, which treats 69 movements from 23 major works by the two composers, reveals close similarities in the way Scarlatti and Handel worked. Indeed, it appears that Handel may have borrowed some of his compositional procedures from his elder contemporary. The article prints detailed tables comparing notational and thematic features in the movements concerned, with special attention to discrepancies between the vocal and instrumental parts. The analysis is confined to movements in C and 3/8, where dotting regularly invades the semiquaver diminutions. This new information could affect our overall view of inégal performance in this period, for Italian-style music of the late Baroque is normally held to be free of inequality.
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