Spring 2002

Grave concerns

On Musical Criticism: Reproduced in the latest issue of MT are F. Gilbert Webb’s comments on music criticism from the April 1902 MT. To what extent are those comments still applicable?

In memoriam

Martha Mödl: born 22 March 1912; died 16 December 2001
Günter Wand: born 7 January 1912; died 14 February 2002
Oskar Sala: born 18 July 1910; died 26 February 2002
Michael Howard: born 14 September 1922; died 4 January 2002
Peter Hemmings: born 10 April 1934; died 4 January 2002

Online excerpts

The science of enchantment: music at the 1937 Paris Exposition

Nigel Simeone surveys a hitherto uncharted area of pre-war musical activity in the French capital

The ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts et des Techniques appliqués à la Vie Moderne’ ran in Paris from the end of May 1937 throughout the summer and into the autumn. After the gaiety of the twenties, the 1930s were a time of national and international political upheaval and, for many Parisians, a certain austerity: it was no accident that the early years of the decade saw the appearance of the first Maigret stories, with their compelling depictions of drab, dour existences and numbing routine. Successive French governments came and went with worrying rapidity, and political extremism on both left and right became increasingly militant, but a rare consensus emerged from the parties of the centre: something spectacular was needed to restore Paris’s flagging self-esteem and to show its most magnificent side to the world. In short, the time was ripe for another of the great international expositions which had proved such dazzling successes in 1855, 1867, 1889 and 1900.

The Halifax Judas: an unknown Handel arrangement by Mozart?

Is a newly discovered manuscript a fifth Handel-Mozart arrangement? Rachel Cowgill considers the evidence.

Recently, what purports to be a fifth Mozart arrangement of Handel — a manuscript full score of Judas Maccabaeus, in three volumes, ‘mit Begleitungen für Blasinstrumenten Von W: A: Mozart’ — has come to light, in Calderdale District Archives, West Yorkshire, among the scores of the Halifax Choral Society.3 The manuscript was presented to the Society in 1850, by one of its founder members — William Priestley (1779—1860), an affluent wool clothier, amateur musician, and collector of an extensive library of choral works.4 Bound into Volume I is a statement of provenance from Priestley himself, a copy of a letter he had written to a local clergyman, describing how he had obtained the manuscript ‘about 25 years ago’ from one of the German settlements of the Moravian Church situated to the north-east of Dresden — ‘whether from Gnadenthal, Niesky, or Görlitz in Lusatia, I do not now recollect’.

Dominant logic: Peter Maxwell Davies’s basic unifying hypothesis

Nicholas Jones assesses the composer’s concept of tonality in the Third and Sixth symphonies

Davies’s concept of tonality has, then, provoked a certain amount of hostility. Certainly, it cannot be denied that the tonal procedure is one of the more contentious and polemic features of his compositional raison d’être. In this article, however, I wish to place Davies’s concept into some kind of reasonable perspective. I will address both the problems and benefits of such a system, and in so doing I intend to offer a retort to those commentators who have dismissed Davies’s concept without any sustained or rigorous evaluation and, furthermore, have totally misunderstood his intentions.

Of church and circus: Pierné in perspective

In the third article in his series Marc Wood revisits the work of a neglected petit-maître

His musical journey, throughout a long career, from avowed Franckian to devil-may-care hedonist of the 1920’s is the musical journey of France itself.

Books reviewed this issue

Constructing musicology, by Alastair Williams, reviewed by Arnold Whittall

During the second half of the twentieth century the story of musicology, like the story of higher education, was one of radical proliferation. In the UK, departments of music were set up in new universities, and there was considerable expansion in older universities and conservatoires. There were more undergraduates, more postgraduates, more lecturers, many more professors, more professional organisations, conferences here, there and everywhere. On cue, publishers responded with more journals, more books, reflecting judgements (or just guesses) about what these institutions and organisations should be studying, teaching and researching, and how those interrelated activities should be conducted. Syllabuses and teaching methods were agonised over, quality (of both teaching and research) was monitored, assessed and categorised as never before, with those engaged in ‘peer review’ often accepting control-criteria of the kind they would vehemently reject in their own musicological work.

Also reviewed in this issue

Women writing opera: creativity and controversy in the age of the French Revolution, by Jacqueline Letzter & Robert Adelson (Patricia Howard)

Reading critics reading: opera and ballet criticism in France from the Revolution to 1848, edited by Roger Parker & Mary Ann Smart (Patricia Howard)

150 years of popular musical theatre, by Andrew Lamb (Stephen Banfield)

Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber: the new musical, by Stephen Citron Lamb (Stephen Banfield)

Johann Strauss and Vienna: operetta and the politics of popular culture, by Camille Crittenden Lamb (Stephen Banfield)

Popular culture in London c.1890—1918: the transformation of entertainment, by Andrew Horrall Lamb (Stephen Banfield)

Reading Renaissance music theory: hearing with the eyes, by Cristle Collins Judd (Peter Williams)

Music theory in seventeenth-century England, by Rebecca Herissone (Peter Williams)

Story of a friendship: the letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman with a commentary by Isaak Glikman, translated by Anthony Phillips (Susan Bradshaw)

Letters of Gerald Finzi & Howard Ferguson, edited by Howard Ferguson & Michael Hurd (Richard Drakeford)

Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony, by Alain Frogley (Robert Anderson)